I believe that filling children’s heads with hopeless, unattainable goals is not only foolish, but cruel. “You can do anything you set your mind to.” Wrong. I hate that preposterous, overused cliché. If you are already two grades behind in fourth grade math, and never manage to catch up with everybody else, you will never be a nuclear physicist. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with not being a nuclear physicist. What is wrong though is that those platitudes about accomplishing anything you set out to accomplish is that some children actually believe it, and when they fail, they feel that they are true failures. They didn’t try hard enough. They failed. Well, if they tried their best, they are not failures. They just didn’t have the ability to fulfill their dreams. Most of us don’t. So don’t fill children’s heads with unrealistic poppycock. Set realistic goals and let them feel the sense of accomplishment they deserve when they achieve what they are able to achieve with their best efforts.

Jiminy Cricket’s “Wish Upon a Star” song in Disney’s movie Pinocchio is referring to life in general and specifically to the puppet-maker, Geppetto, who wishes on a star that his newly made little wooden puppet could be a real boy. With the help of a blue fairy and other Disney magic, Pinocchio in fact becomes a real boy. It’s a cute story, with great animation and terrific music, but it is not real life. Almost all children can differentiate between cartoons and real life, but when their parents or teachers or religious leaders begin to echo the same unrealistic themes found in cartoons, confusion can set in and you are setting a child up for major disappointments.

It could be argued that childhood is mostly a long series of disillusionments, but why add to that list? I’m all for optimism, but it must be realistic to do a child any good. Enter religion.

No one has ever demonstrated that a heaven or a hell or any kind of god exists, and until someone does, let’s acknowledge the intelligence and common sense our children are born with. Let them read and learn and develop their minds. Don’t shut their intellects down with stifling, frightening, often stupid rules and unproved ideas. Once they are adults, if they choose to believe in invisible gods and angels and devils and Dante’s Inferno, well, that’s their choice. But telling young children that if they pray hard enough (to your particular god) their prayers will be answered is no different from Jiminy Cricket’s assurance that when you wish upon a star your dreams come true. No, they won’t. In either instance. Wish, pray—there’s no difference. 

A Sad, True Story

Many years ago I had a very brief encounter with a Pentecostal family. Very brief. I happened to be living in the same apartment complex as this family and got to know the couple and their two children, both girls. One girl, Sarah, was twelve, and the other, Rebecca, was six. Rebecca had leukemia. I was already a full-blown closet atheist, so their constant references to the Lord got on my nerves. But Sarah, the twelve-year-old, seemed to enjoy talking to me, although I never brought up religion. Ever. Sarah, however, never stopped bringing it up.

It seems that Sarah knew how sick her little sister was and she had been told by her parents and everyone at her church that if her faith was strong enough and she prayed hard enough, her little sister would get better. Simple! (Sounds kind of like Jiminy Cricket’s advice, doesn’t it? “If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.”) Long story short, Rebecca died. Sarah was devastated and blamed herself for the death. She knew, she just knew, that if she had prayed more often and prayed harder, that Rebecca would have lived. Her guilt knew no bounds. She gave away all of her toys, telling me they had kept her from praying. She sought me out often to talk about it, but I was struggling mightily to fight off the urge to beat the crap out of her parents.      

Why? When I once tried to approach Sarah’s mother about the child’s terrible, misplaced guilt, the mother took offense and told me that Sarah’s problem was Sarah’s problem, and none of my business. I quickly distanced myself from this family, unable to listen to any more of poor Sarah’s heart-rending sadness or her mother’s bullshit. I’ll never know if guilt-ridden Sarah ever got over her trauma. They moved shortly after the death. But I know that I will never get over my disgust for such child abuse. To my mind, it is nothing less than that.

Two for One

Religions of course are based on the twin concepts of failure and guilt. One example is the ridiculous burden placed on little boys when they discover that they have penises that enjoy being touched. Mother Nature provided this special pleasure so that the species would continue to survive. But many religions, the Roman Catholic Church being a prime example, tells young boys that if they fail to resist the temptation of masturbation, they are guilty of a sin. Failure, guilt and sin rolled into one neat package. But you might as well tell children to never feel hunger or pain. Erections are as natural as the sunrise, and often happen then. If you awake with a penis that is rigid enough to support a circus tent, what else can you do but touch it? You will not go blind if you give it the attention it is begging for, and to teach such frightening lies about it is another form of religious child abuse.     

If you are constantly being told that you are a guilty failure, and that’s what Catholic Confession is all about, your reliance on those prayers (given to you as punishments) become essential to your peace of mind. Okay. I’ll say 50 “Our Fathers” and 25 “Hail Marys” and my conscience will be clear. More or less. How can this not be considered asinine? Mutter some words by rote, as fast as you can, and suddenly you’re all clear with God for beating up little Michael O’Rourke, who is two grades behind you. Well, no. The hell with your meaningless recitations. What you should be told is to go to Michael and apologize to him and his parents. But the church wants to keep you bound and chained to it, so it decides how to treat your bad behavior. Nonsense. All of it nonsense. Unless of course….

You, as a church, want to keep your flock in line, which means keeping those collection plates full. Too cynical? I think not. The Vatican alone could feed half the world if it sold a tiny portion of its art collections. The growing number of Megachurches, with more than 20,000 members each, could do the same, but they’d rather keep their money and build fabulous glass palaces and fund rock bands and so on. Keep the money close to your vest, don’t you know.

All the while preachers are pleading for donations “to the Lord” they are scolding their parishioners to pray for forgiveness for all their sins. Try to picture this. You put your hard-earned money into the collection plate and then pray for forgiveness. There’s something wrong with this image.

And of course no church service would be complete without those concluding prayers for people in trouble. “And Lord, please help Sister Edna survive her tragic car accident. And help little Johnny Jackson fight off the dreaded cancer that has invaded his body.”  Well, she won’t and neither will he, but why? The Bible tells you to be faithful and to pray to God. But why? Why doesn’t prayer work? It’s like tossing a coin. If you pray or not, bad things will happen. Your Pinocchio will never turn into real little boy.

  I’m not alone in finding all this bizarre and way over the top. It’s wishful thinking and nothing more. I just wish all of them could be exposed for the frauds that they are, and start paying taxes like the rest of us poor folk. If you have bilked your flock out of the millions of dollars necessary to build these monstrous altars to your egos, but remain tax exempt, then don’t expect the taxpayer-supported fire department to come to your rescue when you’re on fire. Organize your own fire department and pay for it yourself. Oh, if only.

I do wish that someday all this religious fraud and folderol would come to an and. Oh, how I wish. Maybe if I wish on a star….

  © 2010 Judith Hayes

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