i suppose it's relatively early days yet, but i've started thinking about what janette and i can do so that freya grows up feeling free to think about and choose what she will believe in, but is also attracted to the faith of her parents.
it seems to me that a lot of what goes on in christian circles in regards to 'teaching' children about christianity/jesus/god is not too far removed from indoctrination or brainwashing. we tell kids what to think instead of teaching them how to think for themselves. the agenda is often clearly more to do with getting kids to behave in order to make their parents' feel good about themselves or to make life easier for them and other adults.
almost every 'children's talk' i've seen in churches follows the basic pattern "blah blah blah be good (for jesus)" or "blah blah blah god says honour your parents so be good". when i hear this (which is quite often now that i 'attend church' fairly regularly again), i want to shout out "give them a break! they get the whole be good thing everywhere else, so can't we lay off the guilt tripping in this one place at least where grace not performance is supposed to be the principle." as believers, we really should know better, and it's a sad indictment on the general environment and teaching in churches that this kind of thing is the norm, if not explicitly encouraged. if we truly believe that how good we are is NOT the basis of god's acceptance of us, how come we're teaching our kids that very thing?
i think adults in general seriously disrespect children. in many ways kids are treated as less than human, without minds of their own and not able to think through things and come to appropriate conclusions. we too often try to mold them in our image, forgetting that first and foremost they are children of god and he alone knows what is best for them.
one of the ways i think we disrespect children is by attaching morals to the stories we tell them. this especially applies to stories from the bible or others that illustrate a christian principle. we aren't content to just tell the story, we seem to think we have to spell out the lesson as if our young listeners can't think for themselves. in addition, the 'lesson' is often something we've forced on the story, and reflects an agenda of trying to instill behaviour conformity instead of revealing the infinite love and grace of god.
jesus told many stories, but explained 'the moral' of few of them, and even then only to a select few. i think one of the reasons for this was that he knew most of his hearers weren't ready to receive the message, and spelling it out for them would do more harm than good because they would turn them into principles and rules and thereby fence in the spirit. however, even if few people really understood what he was getting at, i think the stories/parables still had a positive effect by challenging the assumptions and worldview of those listening, confronting them with a different way of seeing things than the prevailing dogma. to use an analogy, the stories were helping to break up the ground so that the seed could eventually sink in and take root.
without denying or downplaying the very real relationship children can have with god, i think most of the task of parents and other adults is at this level of preparing the ground for children to develop their own unique and mature faith in god's good time. to my mind, this means is not being prescriptive about matters of faith, but instead providing an imaginative framework in the form of stories which demonstrate the love and grace of god. these stories can be narratives, fiction or otherwise, from the bible and elsewhere, but the main component is our lives as their parents. it's no secret that kids learn far more from what they see their parents doing than from what they are told. too often kids in 'christian' families grow up getting double messages and basically learn that hypocrisy is the normal mode of being. the 'trick' as parents is for our faith to be natural and consistent, while being upfront about our failures, which, not surprisingly, is what the whole thing is about anyway!