I don’t know that they were horrified (although I can’t say what was going through their heads) but I’d ask a lot of questions about things that made no sense or were outright contradictory. I got a lot of responses like “you ask too many questions” or “ask the minister”. I never bothered to ask the minister because I surmised that he’d be as hard up for an answer as them because it was obvious to me that the things I was being taught made no sense and couldn’t be explained.
My grandmother’s favorite response was always some form of “well, we can’t understand everything”. Well why not? What kind of God makes it so hard to understand how to achieve salvation? Why should it require a degree in theology to make sense of it all?
I grew up living two weeks with my mom and two weeks with my dad, joint custody.
My dad and stepmom and I went to church every Sunday like clockwork when I was a kid. I didn’t love it, but it’s Just The Way Things Were.
My mom, on the other hand, would go to a church semi-regularly, sometimes, for a while, then lose interest or try another, and maybe we wouldn’t go to church for a few months.
One delightful Sunday morning, sleeping in, then eating cereal and watching cartoons, I mentioned to my mom how much nicer it was not to have to go to church every week like I did when I was at my dad’s. Boy was that the wrong thing to say. I don’t think I had a free Sunday morning for a year after that…
I was told by my mother that when I was a lad of 3 or so, she would play the “who made _____” game with me while driving to teach me between what things were made by people and what things were made by god.
“Who made the trees?” “God”
“Who made the mail box?” “people”
“Who made the clouds?” “God”
etc.
She decided to try and stump me by saying “Who made God?” and without hesitation I answered “people”. We didn’t play that game anymore.
I wasn’t a child but a 9th grader. After 8 years of Catholic school, I was in a public junior high, so I was hustled off to CCD class one evening a week. The teacher was a college student who would read her original poetry to us if she didn’t feel like teaching.
One night, she decided to tell us that there was nothing wrong with masturbation. Just to give a frame of reference, this was in the 60s, and the dictionary definition of masturbation was “self-abuse” - I didn’t understand what that meant, but it sounded pretty bad. So I went home and told my mother what the teacher had said. I never had to go to CCD again, and I expect my mom saw to it that the teacher was removed from the program.
I didn’t horrify my parents, but I did piss them off with this. My mother countered that the important thing was showing an effort to please God. I said “God knows I hate being there and am only going because you force me. You’re trying to get me to LIE to GOD.”
I’m trying to remember where I read it and failing, but I read somewhere that the use of the crucifix didn’t start until after the governments in the Mediterranean had stopped using crucifixion as a punishment for decades. There needed to be a bit of mental distance before it could be romanticized.
I bet. Also, I think the article mentioned that for a long time it was the method of execution used for unimportant people. You, know, the rabble. So it was supposed to be a bit insulting to think of him on the cross.
I identify as theistic myself (albeit in a peculiar configuration). Yeah, there were a few interesting conversations over the years…
Age 7: Why are you so sure God has been alive forever? If God could be alive forever then couldn’t something else have been alive first and God came from that?
Age 12: This whole “Jesus is God” thing doesn’t make any sense. If Jesus is supposed to be an example for how we’re supposed to behave and stuff, it only works if we don’t know Jesus was God in disguise. Otherwise no one’s gonna follow his example, they’re gonna say “Well, yeah but he was God, that’s not for us to do”.
Age 14: There are some creepy students in my classes who are glad that Jesus got crucified. They say it means he was the sacrifice and because of it we get to live forever and are saved as long as we believe. But first of all God could forgive us all if he wanted without someone having to be a sacrifice, and second, if he’s gonna require a sacrifice why would he turn around and be the sacrifice himself, that’s silly. It makes a lot more sense that we should be horrified that this is what we did to someone who said we should love each other and share and forgive.
Age 14: I’m not doing communion any more. They were singing this folk song about “eat his body drink his blood and we’ll live forever”. That’s seriously twisted. Is this the church of Count Dracula or something?
Age 16: If Jesus were alive today the Christians would take him to the front of the cross and nail him there as fast as they could to shut him up. Is that why they’ve got it sitting there waiting?
Age 21: I am God. So are you. God’s a participatory sense of self. The folks who think of God as external have it all wrong. Jesus and many other people like him were God in the same sense that we’re all God, plus he tuned in and picked up on the message that people needed to hear. Anyone could do that. God doesn’t send someone, God takes volunteers. If Jesus had gotten kicked in the head by a camel when he was 12 and died, someone else would have said it sooner or later if it needed saying. Same with the Bible. If it’s the word of God you can tune in and hear it without it being written down somewhere by human hands in human language.
Interesting fact about crucifixion: It was originally intended to be a sentence of death by slow torture (anywhere from five to twelve days depending on the victim). Although the penalty was still “on the books” as the specified method of execution, by Jesus’s time it was modified into a “get it other with” form*. This was usually done by breaking the victim’s legs so they couldn’t support themselves and suffocated sooner, but the writers of the Gospels make a point of mentioning that in Jesus’s case he was stabbed with a spear instead (so he met the prophecy of his bones not being broken)
*seriously, they put Jesus to death on the day before the start of the Judeans’ most sacred religious observance. If the point was to not spark a revolt, they had to make sure he was dead and buried before the sun went down.
I grew up in a devout Irish Catholic household, but my father was very cerebral and was never shocked or non-plussed by anything I ever said or asked. If anything, he was inclined to tell me more than I wanted to know about any subject, and to refer me to good books on any subject I raised.
Speaking AS a religious parent myself, I have to field and answer questions or comments from my son all the time.
And when I taught catechism classes at my (Catholic) church, I heard a lot of “interesting” ideas from kids.
NONE of those things has shocked me. If anything, I’m HAPPY when kids take religion seriously enough to think about it and either ask challenging questions or consider the implications of what they’re taught.
I don’t fear kids who ask questions. I fear kids who have already tuned out and STOPPED caring enough to ask questions. THOSE are the kids who have one foot out the door already.
My mother wasn’t too pleased, after she told me that it is just as bad to think about sinning as it is to commit the sin, I told her in that case I may as well just do it since I’m going to be punished anyway.
“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”
I had one of those cool but temporary uncles-in-law who put a copy of Kant’s “Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality” in my Christmas stocking when I was ten.