The Day I Invented a Religion for My Children
One parent’s solution to her children’s religious questions
In my journey as a parent I was inevitably confronted with my fraught relationship with religion. Most of my kids’ friends come from Christian homes, with different degrees of religious fervor. At some point (I believe it was around first grade) they both came to me with questions about religion. “Who is God?” “Who is Jesus?”
This created a big challenge for me.
To explain: I grew up in a Russian Orthodox-Christian community, within a Catholic country. I experienced Catholic mass every Friday in school, and Russian mass every other Sunday in Church. Religion was a big component of my life. There were a lot of positives in it — a sense of community, a sense of purpose, moral values, a sense of belonging, a framework for understanding the Universe.
There were also a lot of negatives. It is hard to convey to an Atheist who’s never experienced religion what it’s like to grow up with the belief, the conviction that there is a Devil. The Devil was an immortal, tireless entity nearly as powerful as God himself. The Devil’s sole purpose was to ruin my life, and get me to Hell — a place of eternal damnation and suffering. What chance did I really have, as an eight-year old kid, against such a foe…
