Without proper guidance from you, your children may grow up thinking the wrong thing. You will want to ensure they don't have access to alternative points of view to pollute their minds. You want to discourage them from asking questions and seeking answers for themselves.
Addendum 2019/01/02 - I just fell across this one today - to me a perfect example of keeping your children's minds closed by "protecting them" from other ideas: "Our pastor is a true man of God. He has been preaching strong from the pulpit on worldly living, such as music and dress, but it doesn’t appear to be penetrating the people’s lives. Only one or two show up for soul winning. Even the youth pastor and teachers and deacons don’t participate. The youth pastor does not preach separation from the world. Most if not all of the youth in the church are worldly and are being fed CCM and secular music at home. There is no dress code and it seems the clothes are getting worse and worse. I am afraid if I let my children participate in the youth program that they will be influenced in a negative way. I feel like out of the entire church, there are only a very few people who understand or even care about the biblical position I am taking."
from: https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/pastors_who_preach_right_but.html
End Addendum
I saw this piece and realized how much it applied to the way many people raise their children. It describes one of the surest ways to indoctrinate young ones from thinking critically about almost everything.
I thought this was considered a cult tactic, but I could be wrong.
I know this was attempted on me while I was a child. Fortunately, I was a "hard-headed little thing" and kept asking questions. I discovered there are many questions you're not supposed to ask, though I never really discovered why. To me, it seems that if you have a solid basis for your belief, you'd want to explain to everyone who asked -- to this day, I have not found that to be the case. The ultimate "answer" is to hide behind "faith"; which to me, then and now, is not an answer at all. The Sep 11th hijackers and Adolph Hitler and many others also had "faith" they were doing their god's work.
So, questions you're not supposed to ask, but you really need to if you're going to reject rationality and accept this group of writings as the absolute, unerring "word of God".
A bit of background first. In the creation story in Genesis, god created heaven and earth (though earth was dark and 'void and without form', and apparently made of water), created light to divide it from the darkness, and called those day and night, and that was the end of the first day (Genesis 1-5). God created the "firmament" in the midst of the waters, to divide the waters from the waters, and the "firmament" divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and called the firmament Heaven; and the evening and the morning were the second day (Genesis 6-8); god gathered the waters under heaven into one place to let the dry land appear, and called the dry land Earth and the gathered together waters he called Seas; and god had the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit yielding trees whose seed is in itself, and the evening and the morning were the third day (Genesis 9-13). [So at this point there exists green, growing plants on land separated from water on "earth", a "heaven" of water, and light from an unknown source to separate light from dark, is that right?]
Continuing the story: God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years", made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, he made the stars also and set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and the evening and the morning were the fourth day (Genesis 14:19). Then god created the creatures of the deep, the winged fowl, the beasts of the land, then humans "male and female created he them" (Genesis 27), and commanded that all land creatures at least, be vegetarians; and now it's the end of the sixth day. *
I see nothing metaphorical, nor as allegory, nor as parable as I read this story. I see it as obviously wrong, but am discussing it as the event narrative it pretends to be. I am left with many questions. Questions I've had since I first heard these stories s a young child, plus a few I wondered about a few years later:
These are just a few of the things that have bothered me, and only covers the first few verses of the first chapter of this book. Can you logically answer any of them?
* The verse at Galatians 4:24 is often used as a justifying proof text for allegorizing Biblical narratives. Here Paul is saying that the ancient conflict ... was a spiritual allegory. Modern theological liberals often do the same thing whenever modern scientific philosophy seems to conflict with a Biblical narrative. The most important example is the story of creation in the very first chapter of the Bible. The allegorical interpretation of this record denies its historicity, but tries to retain its supposed “spiritual” message by finding a devotional application in its narratives.This Biblical example, therefore, tells us that, if we draw allegorical applications from its historical records, it can only be on the basis that the events themselves really happened. https://www.icr.org/article/21833/
Then there's this Catholic's "explanation" that claims the entire creation narrative was "god" peacefully creating all, thus tying this story to the future Jesus character's "peaceful teachings", and de-throning the then existent nature gods of sun and natural phenomenon, and further emphasizing all these creations are good thereby holding off all forms of dualism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism; all this in one fell swoop. https://strangenotions.com/the-genesis-problem/ To me, this author displays an amazing imagination, reading so much into so little.
Addendum 2019/01/02 - I just fell across this one today - to me a perfect example of keeping your children's minds closed by "protecting them" from other ideas: "Our pastor is a true man of God. He has been preaching strong from the pulpit on worldly living, such as music and dress, but it doesn’t appear to be penetrating the people’s lives. Only one or two show up for soul winning. Even the youth pastor and teachers and deacons don’t participate. The youth pastor does not preach separation from the world. Most if not all of the youth in the church are worldly and are being fed CCM and secular music at home. There is no dress code and it seems the clothes are getting worse and worse. I am afraid if I let my children participate in the youth program that they will be influenced in a negative way. I feel like out of the entire church, there are only a very few people who understand or even care about the biblical position I am taking."
from: https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/pastors_who_preach_right_but.html
End Addendum
I saw this piece and realized how much it applied to the way many people raise their children. It describes one of the surest ways to indoctrinate young ones from thinking critically about almost everything.
I thought this was considered a cult tactic, but I could be wrong.
I know this was attempted on me while I was a child. Fortunately, I was a "hard-headed little thing" and kept asking questions. I discovered there are many questions you're not supposed to ask, though I never really discovered why. To me, it seems that if you have a solid basis for your belief, you'd want to explain to everyone who asked -- to this day, I have not found that to be the case. The ultimate "answer" is to hide behind "faith"; which to me, then and now, is not an answer at all. The Sep 11th hijackers and Adolph Hitler and many others also had "faith" they were doing their god's work.
So, questions you're not supposed to ask, but you really need to if you're going to reject rationality and accept this group of writings as the absolute, unerring "word of God".
A bit of background first. In the creation story in Genesis, god created heaven and earth (though earth was dark and 'void and without form', and apparently made of water), created light to divide it from the darkness, and called those day and night, and that was the end of the first day (Genesis 1-5). God created the "firmament" in the midst of the waters, to divide the waters from the waters, and the "firmament" divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and called the firmament Heaven; and the evening and the morning were the second day (Genesis 6-8); god gathered the waters under heaven into one place to let the dry land appear, and called the dry land Earth and the gathered together waters he called Seas; and god had the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit yielding trees whose seed is in itself, and the evening and the morning were the third day (Genesis 9-13). [So at this point there exists green, growing plants on land separated from water on "earth", a "heaven" of water, and light from an unknown source to separate light from dark, is that right?]
Continuing the story: God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years", made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, he made the stars also and set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and the evening and the morning were the fourth day (Genesis 14:19). Then god created the creatures of the deep, the winged fowl, the beasts of the land, then humans "male and female created he them" (Genesis 27), and commanded that all land creatures at least, be vegetarians; and now it's the end of the sixth day. *
I see nothing metaphorical, nor as allegory, nor as parable as I read this story. I see it as obviously wrong, but am discussing it as the event narrative it pretends to be. I am left with many questions. Questions I've had since I first heard these stories s a young child, plus a few I wondered about a few years later:
- How does the entire cosmos, as we would now call it, consist of water?
- Why or how is earth "void and without form" if it's been created or spoken into existence? Is it just an area of water not delineated in any way?
- Why did the Creator god create "light" on the first day? God couldn't have needed "light" to see what s/he/it was doing, omniscient as s/he/it is. What caused this "light" to periodically give way to the surrounding darkness, then switch back on? Was it the same 24hr cycle the sun would provide 3 days later? Oh wait, did this this first "light" need to be waterproof? Where was it positioned? Maybe it just glowed from the Creator god's presence? But then why would it be to be created at all?
- The "firmament" was "heaven"? It's purpose was to allow earth to have atmosphere and hold back the waters of "heaven" and the rest of the cosmos?
- Once the sun, moon, stars were created on the 4th day, what happened to the original "light"?
- All land animals are not herbivores. Most humans are not solely herbivores. What made some of the animals become carnivores (even excluding humans for our supposed later wickedness)?
These are just a few of the things that have bothered me, and only covers the first few verses of the first chapter of this book. Can you logically answer any of them?
* The verse at Galatians 4:24 is often used as a justifying proof text for allegorizing Biblical narratives. Here Paul is saying that the ancient conflict ... was a spiritual allegory. Modern theological liberals often do the same thing whenever modern scientific philosophy seems to conflict with a Biblical narrative. The most important example is the story of creation in the very first chapter of the Bible. The allegorical interpretation of this record denies its historicity, but tries to retain its supposed “spiritual” message by finding a devotional application in its narratives.This Biblical example, therefore, tells us that, if we draw allegorical applications from its historical records, it can only be on the basis that the events themselves really happened. https://www.icr.org/article/21833/
Then there's this Catholic's "explanation" that claims the entire creation narrative was "god" peacefully creating all, thus tying this story to the future Jesus character's "peaceful teachings", and de-throning the then existent nature gods of sun and natural phenomenon, and further emphasizing all these creations are good thereby holding off all forms of dualism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism; all this in one fell swoop. https://strangenotions.com/the-genesis-problem/ To me, this author displays an amazing imagination, reading so much into so little.
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