Often, we hear from certain religionists that "God gave people free will". How important is free will in one's faith? I have, in the past, argued that duress does not equal free will, and therefore to worship and honor God as a response to Pascal's Wager is inappropriate. This point, of course, depends on what someone means by free will.
Setting aside duress, what of fraud? In making a point to a friend recently about the behavior of certain religious people of my acquaintance, I pointed out that while they claim to not preach, they attempt to immerse a child in an environment where the religion is everywhere she turns. In this case, it is a sect of Christianity, and while making the point that the bookshelves are lined with titles like A Child's Steps to Jesus and The Clear Word for Kids, I came across a note at the publisher's website.
Now, the thing is that I'm already critical of the very idea of a "Bible paraphrase". One of my favorite examples of the problem with this is that The Clear Word (for adults, as such) actually hands a certain argumentative point to its critics, but without any sense of irony. In Genesis 3.23, God speaks of Adam and Eve becoming "like us". Well, who is this "us"? The paraphrase author, Dr. Jack Blanco, asserts that God is talking to the Son and Holy Ghost, and furthermore assures that the fall of man at Eden is according to His Plan.
The kids' edition, though, is my concern on this count. The publisher notes the following:
Now, I actually understand the idea of reducing the amount of repetition and genealogy, but that seems a market consideration. As a consideration of faith, I do not find it inappropriate; this is one of the few occasions on which I find myself in agreement with conservative evangelical Christians. For more on the controversy such books, Wikipedia discusses some criticisms of biblical paraphrase in some of its entries (see "The Living Bible" and "Criticism of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church: The Clear Word").
The reduction of violence, though, seems especially disingenuous. I would assert that if children are not capable of understanding the nuances of genocide or appreciating the merits of a father offering his daughters to be gang-raped by an angry mob, perhaps it would be best to leave decisions of faith for a later age. But that, it should be easy enough to see, is both logistically problematic and potentially threatening of the faith's perpetuity. The idea of stacking the deck so that a "free-will" decision is made by someone pre-conditioned to elect one option over the other seems rather dishonest to me. Furthermore, blanching the religion so that the subjects of conditioning exercises are trained to accept a deliberately-inaccurate view of the faith—thus depending on the idea that the desire to avoid punishment at God's hands will govern the reconciliation of what is taught to what the Bible actually says—suggests quite strongly a lack of faith on the part of the adult community. Apparently the Word of God is insufficient to communicate His Grace. The grown-ups need to deceive the children in order to condition them to make a free-will decision based on a conditioned fear of punishment and a fraudulent assertion of the faith itself.
Is it appropriate to lie to children this way in order to condition them to behave as one wishes? If, as Aquinas wrote, the "sacrifice of the intellect" is one in which God most delights, should that sacrifice be made by the believer, or for the believer?
And when that believer makes the demonstrative sacrifice, is it really fair that he or she should be making the gesture under fraudulent pretenses fomented by those whose duty it is to protect children from exploitation?
Why would the faithful fear that God's Word is inadequate? Why should the faithful dress it up to deceive people?
Setting aside duress, what of fraud? In making a point to a friend recently about the behavior of certain religious people of my acquaintance, I pointed out that while they claim to not preach, they attempt to immerse a child in an environment where the religion is everywhere she turns. In this case, it is a sect of Christianity, and while making the point that the bookshelves are lined with titles like A Child's Steps to Jesus and The Clear Word for Kids, I came across a note at the publisher's website.
Now, the thing is that I'm already critical of the very idea of a "Bible paraphrase". One of my favorite examples of the problem with this is that The Clear Word (for adults, as such) actually hands a certain argumentative point to its critics, but without any sense of irony. In Genesis 3.23, God speaks of Adam and Eve becoming "like us". Well, who is this "us"? The paraphrase author, Dr. Jack Blanco, asserts that God is talking to the Son and Holy Ghost, and furthermore assures that the fall of man at Eden is according to His Plan.
The kids' edition, though, is my concern on this count. The publisher notes the following:
Now, I actually understand the idea of reducing the amount of repetition and genealogy, but that seems a market consideration. As a consideration of faith, I do not find it inappropriate; this is one of the few occasions on which I find myself in agreement with conservative evangelical Christians. For more on the controversy such books, Wikipedia discusses some criticisms of biblical paraphrase in some of its entries (see "The Living Bible" and "Criticism of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church: The Clear Word").
The reduction of violence, though, seems especially disingenuous. I would assert that if children are not capable of understanding the nuances of genocide or appreciating the merits of a father offering his daughters to be gang-raped by an angry mob, perhaps it would be best to leave decisions of faith for a later age. But that, it should be easy enough to see, is both logistically problematic and potentially threatening of the faith's perpetuity. The idea of stacking the deck so that a "free-will" decision is made by someone pre-conditioned to elect one option over the other seems rather dishonest to me. Furthermore, blanching the religion so that the subjects of conditioning exercises are trained to accept a deliberately-inaccurate view of the faith—thus depending on the idea that the desire to avoid punishment at God's hands will govern the reconciliation of what is taught to what the Bible actually says—suggests quite strongly a lack of faith on the part of the adult community. Apparently the Word of God is insufficient to communicate His Grace. The grown-ups need to deceive the children in order to condition them to make a free-will decision based on a conditioned fear of punishment and a fraudulent assertion of the faith itself.
Is it appropriate to lie to children this way in order to condition them to behave as one wishes? If, as Aquinas wrote, the "sacrifice of the intellect" is one in which God most delights, should that sacrifice be made by the believer, or for the believer?
And when that believer makes the demonstrative sacrifice, is it really fair that he or she should be making the gesture under fraudulent pretenses fomented by those whose duty it is to protect children from exploitation?
Why would the faithful fear that God's Word is inadequate? Why should the faithful dress it up to deceive people?
