£amb said:
How does it leave them to great peril? I grew up in a christian home and was taken to church every Sunday and Wednesday. When I became a christian, it wasn't because my mother told me to. I sat on the bed with my sister one afternoon, maaaany years ago, and she was the one who told me what it took to be a child of God. We're talking a 12yr. old and a 9yr. old....not adults. My oldest son will be 11yrs. old soon, and he has become a christian on his own choice. Yes, he was taken to church, but it was by the Holy Spirit and God that helped him make his choice...not me. I was letting him learn and to be ready on his own. When he is more grounded in his faith, then it's his choice if he wants to learn about other religion, but I'm not going to throw a bunch of books of his lap and tell him "hey, as soon as you learn how to be a mature christian then you need to become familiar with every other religion out there." As I said in an earlier post, I'm now just becoming familiar with other religions. It was my choice, but I waited until I was ready. When my kids are ready to learn, then they can learn.
But it comes down to the choice of the parent if they think their child is ready to be exposed to many religions.
I was raised pretty much as you were. The vocabulary "becoming a Christian" was the way my parents' church viewed faith, and it was always presented as an individual decision.
However, not all Christian parents think that way. Whether or not children are baptized before they are old enough to make that choice for themselves is something that shows Christians differ in how they consider a child's identity as a Christian to be formed.
There are other variables, too. To what degree does your child interact with non-Christian children? If your next-door neighbors are Buddhist or Muslim, you are going to have certain kinds of discussions with your child that you probably wouldn't have if you carefully kept your child from encountering people of other faiths.
Very few parents lay out a smorgasbord of religions before their child at a certain age. All parents model to their children the ways in which faith is or is not a part of the parent's and/or the family's identity. All parents realize that gradually the responsibility for a child's identity shifts from the parent to the child, with the extended family and larger community having a role, too, to varying degrees.
I had a neighbor once who wanted her children baptized so they would have godparents, but insisted they not be exposed to religion "until they were old enough to understand it was just a myth." It seemed to me that she was giving mixed messages about her family's religious identity, but the basic family identity she was forming in her child was one of non-faith. My daughter is a little evangelist and catechist, so relationships with parents of her friends who are trying to inoculate their children against religion have been interesting, to say the least. But basically she has been exposed to other religions and non-religions as she has come into contact with people of different views.
I don't think there is one right way. I think it is good for children to get to know
people of different backgrounds and cultures. Exposure to other religions will be a natural part of this, but parents are still going to instill in their child an identity, and the child will get from the parents' modeling, even more than teaching, what part faith plays in that identity.
