Hypocrisy
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008One of the blogs I enjoy reading (when I actually have time for them) is Ask Bossy. Unlike Dear Abby, she deals with interesting, complicated issues, that have more than one answer. Anyway, yesterday, she posted this. To summarize, the poster is dating this girl of a different religion. He wants to raise his kids within his religion, and while it seems unclear as to what his girlfriend wants, she doesn’t seem to be willing to raise them within her boyfriend’s religion. They’ve tried breaking up on several occasions, to no avail. He is at a loss of what to do. Clearly, this struck a chord.
I read through a chunk of the comments, and was appalled at how nasty some people can be, the assumptions many of them can make. For instance, many assumed he was Fundamentalist, that he had a problem with other religions. More than a few claimed that he was selfish, manipulative, a religious nut, inflexible, and bigoted. A large number railed against him for “cramming religion down his (future) children’s throats”.
Aside from the fact that many of these atheists/agnostics appear to be Fundamentalist (def: strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles) themselves, and hence slightly hypocritical, I have a problem with the last statement. The process of parenting involves indoctrinating one’s children in the values they deem to be true with the hopes that when they mature and formulate their own opinions they will be identical to the ones they grew up with.
A parent, for example, will teach their children that drugs are wrong. This, too, like religion, is an indoctrination. Will a parent then be upset if once his child leaves home, and then starts shooting heroin? Of course! Not only is it against all that was taught, it is dangerous, and physically harming. If a parent teaches her child to study hard and do all her homework, and then when she leaves for college she fails her first semester, the parent will also be upset - the child is hurting her odds at a good career and hence a good life.
It is the same with religion. If a child turns away from the faith he or she was brought up with, a parent fears for his child’s soul. A good parent will meddle if their child does drugs, and a good parent will get involved if their child “strays” from the religion in which they were indoctrinated. Good parents will also know when it is time to let go, and allow their children to choose for themselves the life that they want. Even if it means wasting away with cocaine, or converting to another religion. For a devout person, these two are both harmful - one physically, the other spiritually.
A parent who chooses to raise her child within the confines of a particular religion (or within the realm of a non-religion, such as agnosticism or secular humanism), is no more cramming a concept down her child’s throat than a parent who makes his child study or eat his vegetables. A child left to her own devices would never do her homework and would ice cream and cookies for dinner, resulting in bad grades and a bad stomach ache. That is why they are children - they don’t understand how present actions have future consequences. Until one day they do, and parents back off, and allow their children to do what they believe will be the best.
What bothered me most, I think, was the inordinate number of people riding the poor guy for refusing to raise children in a religion outside of his own. I personally would not marry someone who wouldn’t let me raise our children Jewish, just as I wouldn’t marry someone who wouldn’t indoctrinate our children on the value of a good education.
And the vast number of people who called the poster bigoted are, in my opinion, the intolerant ones.