Christianity Hurts Kids
When Jesus said “suffer the children,” I’m not sure that’s what he meant
I was sitting outside my junior high school, squeezed against the building out of the rain, watching the road and listening as if my life depended on it.
I’d remained after school for a free clarinet lesson. It was a bold move on my part, and spoke to my desire to learn the instrument. Staying after school was torment to me, and I usually did everything in my small power to avoid it — to prevent any situation where my mother would have to pick me up.
My mother was always late — sometimes hours late — and as a result I had developed a fear of abandonment. I was struggling with it now.
I fixed my eyes on the road, straining for the first possible sight of our Volvo. The car had a bit of a muffler problem, so I listened, as well, for its distinctive grumble.
And I prayed. I prayed hard.
Ours was a Christian family. We went to church several times a week — non-denominational that year, Methodist the year before — and I’d given my heart to Jesus.
I knew that allowing myself to fear was sinful. I knew that I should be trusting God, if not my mother. I knew that God answered prayer, and that if I prayed for the fear to go away, I’d find peace.
Crouched next to my school, I whispered to myself. “Perfect love casts out fear, perfect love casts out fear.”*
Yet the anxiety electrified my veins, twisted my stomach, sent tears to my eyes.
I was a sinner. I’d failed at faith.
Along with the fear, I felt shame.
Christianity fails children
Anyone paying attention knows that Christianity has — and continues to be — a safe haven for pedophiles. Whether it’s Catholics or Baptists, or my own incestuous tent-preacher great-grandfather — when a man is next to God in power, it’s fairly impossible to escape his unwanted advances.
But sacrificing children to the sexual appetites of adults is not the only way Christianity harms its young. You don’t have to rape kids to steal their hope. In many churches and homes, the damage is done quietly, subtly, and with the near-total approbation of church bodies and society. The religion, viewed for millennia as above reproach, lends itself easily to the destruction of budding self-esteem and lifelong potential.
That’s how it was for me.
Christianity forces children to deny their own reason — or risk Hell.
When, at the age of 12, I was waiting for my mother outside that school, I was internalizing messages I’d heard again and again, sitting beside my parents in a pew. None of our religious leaders had ever thought to make a distinction between the struggles of a child and the struggles of an adult. No one gave children a pass for their newness, their vulnerability.
Children’s souls needed saving as much as adult souls did, and the harshness of the salvation message — believe or perish — was meant for them, too. As was everything else in the Bible.
I wasn’t yet in school when I was told that God was Jesus’ father, that Mary was his mother, that Joseph was Mary’s husband. For a while, I assumed that Joseph was God. And why not? In the world I lived in — the world whose rules I was just learning — fathers of humans were also human.
Later I realized my mistake. How could I have been so silly? And I forced my growing, developing brain to accept a supernatural explanation: Jesus was fathered miraculously and sexlessly by an unseen deity.
The Garden of Eden, Noah and the ark, Jesus’ miracles and resurrection, a talking snake, the parting of the Red Sea — in homes such as mine, belief was mandatory.
Can you imagine a child realizing that Santa Claus is not real — reasoning out that a single man could not possibly deliver toys to all the children in the world in one night, even if there were flying reindeers — and telling that child that they were wrong? That their rational conclusion was incorrect?
Now imagine telling them that they’ll be sent to Hell if they stop believing.
Demons and End Times
And it isn’t just miracles and myths that Christian children are force-fed on Sunday mornings. There are darker parts of the religion, as well. I wasn’t allowed to watch PG-rated movies until adulthood, yet no one in the half-dozen churches I attended ever thought to shield me from discussions of Satan, Hell, and the End Times.
While the adults around me were in raptures at the thought of the Rapture, I was trying to wrap my young mind around the terrifying knowledge that I wouldn’t live long enough to grow up — that the joys and accomplishments of adulthood would never be mine.
Not only that, but we children, still dependent on the grownups in our lives, knew that when Jesus did return, many would be left behind. We lived in the fear that our family would be separated, that we’d find ourselves on the Tribulation side of the equation, or that we’d be wandering the golden streets of Heaven alone.
And then there was that Christian antagonist, Satan — an evil entity so powerful that he gave even God a run for his money. When we weren’t worrying about the Day of Judgment, we were scrambling to avoid Satan’s minions, who seemed to be able to enter a person pretty much at will. The wrong book, song, movie, activity or attitude could land us with a literal demon.
To this day I have anxiety on tap. I don’t like horror movies. I don’t enjoy rollercoasters. I just don’t need the adrenaline, thank you. And from what I’ve heard from other ex-Christians, I’m not alone. A childhood spent with demons in the closet and a countdown clock on the bedside table has left many of us with emotional scars.
And God help those whose parents detected at demon in them.
Christianity opens the door to violence against kids.
When I was 13, my family adopted a child from an Asian country. The transition didn’t go well. The child — suddenly thrown into a new family with a new culture, a new language — had every reason to exhibit behavior issues. My mother, though, being steeped in conservative Christianity, saw him as evil, demon-possessed — perhaps even the Antichrist. He was, after all, “from the East.”
The ensuing abuse of that child is still difficult for me to process, and I won’t horrify you with the details. I will say that, had he not been taken from our home, there is every possibility he would’ve died. For Jesus.
In our society it’s not unheard of for parents to kill their children, citing demon possession — an element of their Christian beliefs — as the motivating factor. I’ve seen firsthand how this could happen. I was spared, at the age of 14, from becoming an accomplice to murder. But I wasn’t spared the guilt of involvement, the trauma of watching a 4-year-old being subjected to torture.
God dropped the ball
I’m not sharing this in order to attack Christianity. I’m saying it because it’s not said enough. Children are suffering. And the messages that they and their parents receive from the pulpit — that’s where the seeds of pain are planted.
Perhaps you’ll tell me that my family was worse than most, that my experiences are unusual.
Does that matter? The dysfunction in our home was magnified, the danger to us exacerbated by what we heard in church.
Without Christianity, my mother would still have been late. I would have been afraid, but I would not have been ashamed of my lack of faith. If not for Christianity, my adopted brother would still have struggled to adjust, but my mother would’ve had no reason to perceive a demon in him, let alone the Antichrist.
There are Ten Commandments in the Bible, and not one of them specifically protects the most vulnerable among us. Did the Christian God, who calls us all his children, not think about the actual children, and the possible — probable — effects of the messages in that “inerrant” book of his?
Christianity too often gets a pass for teachings that in any other situation would be called out as abusive, manipulative and cruel. If God refuses to speak up for children, we need to do it ourselves.
* 1 John 4:18
