Is Religious Indoctrination Child Abuse?

Once the veil of religion was lifted from my eyes, so many things that I had never considered suddenly seemed glaringly apparent. I am sure this is not news to anyone who has come out of a rigid or even liberal religious background to a position of unbridled freedom of thought. There are so many aspects of what I had been taught was ‘right’ and ‘good’ that I am sure I will be busy for many months writing and posting my thoughts.

One of the major concerns that I now have as a free thinker is the entire concept of children being indoctrinated into religious thought at a young age. To a westernized Christian, the idea that church ideology could harm a child is not even considered. But this same group of people would no doubt cringe at the site of Muslim boys sitting crossed legged for hours memorizing the Koran, rocking forward and backward like some automaton. This is what passes for education in many places in this world.

I would have no way of knowing what Christians today choose to allow their young children to know of the Bible’s blood lust, but I hope that most use some discretion. Most Christians that I know have major blind spots or complete ignorance of most of the Bible which would indicate to me that they never were taught these parts or at the least that they were conveniently overlooked.

But this begs the question; why use the Bible as your guide to child-rearing if you have to ignore large portions of what it teaches? I could list dozens of passages that are not fit to be heard by children, but I will refrain for now and limit by choices to one; the wonderful father and son adventure of Abraham and Isaac.

Once upon a time ….

‘God’ decides to tempt Abraham to test his faith and willingness to murder his son. Why ‘God’ would have to tempt Abraham is odd considering that he should already know whether Abraham had faith or not. And the method that Abraham receives this command isn’t defined. If Abraham receives his messages from ‘God’ as most believers do, then I assume it is a voice in his head.

To get on with the story, The Voice in Abraham’s Head tells him to go on a trip with his son, load up some asses and couple of servants and head off to commit murder on top of some yet to be disclosed mountain. When they get within sight of the mountain, Abraham leaves the servants and asses and heads up the mountain with Isaac. First, Abraham loads up Isaac with the wood that will be needed to burn him and he gets some fire, maybe a book of matches from one of the servants, who knows. By the way, Abraham lies to the servants about where he and his son are headed, he tells them they are going to go to yon mountain and worship. He isn’t exactly honest in saying that he is going to yon mountain to murder my only son.

At this point, Isaac asks his father where the lamb to offer as a sacrifice is. Abraham again lies and says that ‘God’ will provide that. He could have been honest and said, “Lamb, I don’t need no stinking Lamb”.

Abraham and Isaac get to the top of the mountain and build the alter of sacrifice. Abraham binds Isaac. Evidently, Isaac can not be trusted to simply lie on the alter and be slaughtered willingly. Like most sensible people, he would probably try to avoid being murdered by his father.

Without hesitation or even a second check of that voice in his head, Abraham raises the knife to murder his son. What Isaac is thinking at this time or doing is not specified in the holy texts. My guess would be that having been bound and laid on an alter, he was probably screaming something to the effect of “WTF!”.

Just at that moment, one of ‘God’s’ flunkies, a nameless angel (who at least does speak out of the clouds as we would expect them to), commands Abraham to put down the knife and tells him that the whole deal was pretty much just a little joke ‘God’ had played upon him. ‘God’ evidently was too busy to speak directly to Abraham at this time. He may have been destroying Sodom and Gomorrah or turning someone into a pillar of salt.

Abraham notices a goat that is now in some bushes and decides to kill it instead of Isaac. Abraham is praised for being a really cool servant of God for his willingness to murder his own son and is promised to get the ‘God’ version of Viagra to go and spread his wonderful seed all over the land.

I am not really sure what kind of relationship that Isaac and Abraham had after that. It doesn’t seem to be important to ‘God’. I can only guess that Isaac slept with one eye open and avoided going on vacation with dad after that.

…and they lived happily ever after?

This passage is the subject of unknown numbers of sermons in churches every week. Can you imagine the fear that it must put into the minds of children? I wonder if any of the kids ask their fathers what they would do if ‘God’ instructed them to do such a thing.

What would you Real Christians do if instructed by ‘God’ to murder your children and what would you expect your secular counterparts to do if you acted upon this instruction from a voice in your head?

The problem that True Believers seem to have is that they want to credit their holy book for any morality they may have, but their true morality is based upon secular values, not those condoned in the bloody Bible.

These people should think about what they are doing before they send their kids off to Sunday school or to a religious school. Damage is being done.