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Talking to Your Children About Other Religions

Talking to Your Children About Other Religions

Last updated on: June 30, 2016 at 2:55 am by Ryan Stollar

Talking to Your Children About Other Religions 2016-06-30T02:55:12+08:00 Ryan Stollar

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

"Krishna" by Praveen, Flickr. Used according to Creative Commons license.

“Krishna” by Praveen, Flickr. Used according to Creative Commons license.

Growing up, I was always interested in world religions. While I accepted Jesus into my heart as a little kid, I was nonetheless fascinated by faiths that were not my own. Some of my favorite books were the D’Aulaires’ books for children on Greek and Norse mythology. I loved the fantastical stories they contained. The images of gods and goddesses fighting and playing filled my imagination with wonder and inspiration.

But the Christian evangelical world I grew up in did not encourage me to pursue my interest in other religions. As I grew older, the only times I studied them was to learn how to attack them—allegedly for the sake of Jesus. When I attended Summit Ministries, for example, I was taught flimsy, cardboard caricatures of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. And even then, I was only taught those caricatures so I could memorize catchphrases with which I could supposedly refute them.

Now that I am an adult, I have a greater appreciation for world religions. Part of my journey towards this appreciation was getting my Masters in Eastern Classics at St. John’s College, where I studied religions from China, India, and Japan. For the first time in my life, I really got to appreciate religions other than my own. No one was telling me what was “wrong” with them. No one was interrupting my train of thought by telling me, “But Jesus!” I simply got to learn what other people and cultures think about the world.

In light of these experiences, I want to pass on a few things I have learned. These are four lessons I wish I was taught as a child. And I believe they better reflect a Christian understanding of world religions than what fundamentalism taught me.

First, everyone is made in the image of God.

I really think this is the starting place for understanding religion in general. Everyone–regardless of what they believe–is made in the image of God. In Genesis 1:27, we are told that, “God created humans in Their own image. God created humans to be like Themselves.” One part of being imaged after God is curiosity. Every human being has a spark in their hearts that drives them to make sense of the world. Humans want to know where the universe came from, what sustains the universe, what it means to be human, and if there is life after death. We want to know. That is, after all, why we ate from the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Humans want to know about life because God made us that way.

Second, religions are how people make sense of the world.

It is the spark that God put in each of our hearts, that spark that makes us want to know about the universe, that leads to the world’s many religions. Growing up, I was taught otherwise. I was taught that people create religions other than Christianity because they are rebelling against God or because they hate God. As a result, I was taught that there was nothing to appreciate about other religions. They are all based in sin and darkness. And people who follow them are either unintelligent or evil.

But now I believe otherwise. Now I look at world religions and think, “If the heavens tell about the glory of God and the skies announce what Their hands have made” (Psalm 19:1), how much more do world religions declare the glory of God? Religions are an impressive attempt by humans to make sense of life! In their creativity and beauty and complexity, they are witnesses to God’s creativity and beauty and complexity—those very attributes that God instilled into us. So when I look at the hundreds of colorful, vibrant gods and goddesses in Hinduism, for example, I am not threatened. Rather, my love for God deepens. My Christian faith empowers me to see the beauty in other faiths.

Third, it is ok to be interested in religions other than Christianity.

When I was a teenager at Summit, it was ok to be interested in other religions as long as I was learning how to attack them. But being interested in other religions because I thought they had lessons they could teach us? That would be sacrilege.

Now that I am older, I believe there are lots of things to appreciate about religions other than Christianity. In fact, I think Christians have much to learn from non-Christians! For example, Buddhism, through its teachings on embracing life without being attached to it, can teach Christians how to be in the world but not of it. Hinduism, with its emphasis on the lila, or playfulness, of Krishna, can show Christians how to appreciate God as a God of play. Atheism, with its lifting up of science, can inspire Christians to better pay attention to and understand how the universe’s mechanics work.

If we believe all truth comes from God, if we join Saint Augustine in declaring that, “Let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master” (On Christian Doctrine, II.18.28), then we can see that God gave different pieces of the puzzle to different people. We might not agree about what the final product looks like, but we still have a lot to learn from one another.

Fourth, all religions—including your own—have both good and bad elements.

While religions reflect how humans make sense of the world, they also can reflect attempts to control and hurt people. This is just as relevant to Christianity as it is to non-Christian religions. Every religion has ideas or interpretations of ideas that do not contribute to human thriving.

So it is ok for Christians to both disagree with aspects of various religions (including their own) while at the same time appreciate the unique perspectives they offer. That is normal. That is part of the process by which we grow and learn why we believe what we believe. When we have the freedom to explore different belief systems and identify what we like and dislike about each, that ultimately makes our commitment to our own belief system all the more personal and significant.

As Caris Adel wrote about respecting world religions, “Part of being unfundamentalist is learning from and appreciating other people and other beliefs and learning to respect people’s differences.” After all, there are both good and bad things about everyone’s religious beliefs. No one is perfect. No one human has made perfect sense of the world. Even when we use the Bible and Jesus as the basis for our faith, we are still importing our own fallible ideas into our faith. Learning to appreciate other religions helps us identify what those ideas are and can therefore bring us to a better appreciation of our own faith.

Ultimately, I think that learning about world religions is part of God’s command to love our neighbor. If we do not know our neighbors well enough to know what they actually believe, then we do not know them well enough to truly love them. Studying our neighbors’ religions, even when we disagree, enables us to enter into deeper relationship with one another.

Resources for Learning About World Religions

For adults:

What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism

Baby Krishna, Infant Christ

Living Buddha, Living Christ

The First Muslim

Wouldn’t It Be Nice if Christians Became Taoists?

Mystics and Zen Masters

The Way of Chuang Tzu

The Power of Myth

The Atheist’s Way

For children:

The Kids Book of World Religions

What Do You Believe?

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths

D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths

The Tao of Pooh

The Te of Piglet

The Little Book of Hindu Deities

The Three Questions

Ramadan

Celebrate: A Book of Jewish Holidays

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