Sunday, April 12, 2009

Religious Questions


We don't go to church, but I'm not stridently atheist. Indeed, I selfishly appreciate my two young son's belief in God right now because if I were to die, my sons thinking I am in heaven looking down on them would be very comforting. At least, it's comforting to me.

But this leads to problems, because I don't have a very coherent religious philosophy. For example, he asked why bunnies deliver eggs on Easter. The questions, and my answers, only got worse.

Son: why do we celebrate Easter?
Dad: it's the day Jesus rose from the dead
Son: Jesus is a zombie?

There are a lot of zombies in his cartoons and joke books, and they aren't really the kind of people you want your kids emulating (especially eating habits). Then there's the Lutheran church he sometimes goes to in the summer for daycare or camp. There is a strong German tone to the church, and I have a lot of German ancestors. So, of course,

Son: we worship a German God?
Dad: well, Lutheranism has a lot of German influence, blah bla bla...
Son: so, we worship Hitler?

If you had to pick one guy to not worship, I'm sure the Fuhrer would be in the top 3. I guess this highlights that there's no such thing as bad publicity (I do watch the History channel a lot, which has a quota for Hitler programming each day). I imagined him telling the principal we belong to one of the Protestant offshoots, you know, the Hitler/zombie worshiping faction.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

the question of when to let the kids know the truth is an interesting one. i was agnostic until my 30s when i finally read the good books. something definitely changed. not sure if i wasted 30 years or it helped me stay out of trouble in my crazy days, though.

tom s. said...

And of course Easter is really to celebrate the goddess of fertility Oestre (or something)who gave her name to estrogen. Hence eggs, rabbits, and other renewing/fertile things. Like resurrections.