A friend shared with me a story from NPR, about a multi-faith group of parents who gather to teach their children about their families’ beliefs and ‘virtues’ of spirituality, such as obedience and justice:

‘Rachel Galoob-Ortega, who is Jewish, says she wants her son Luka to learn about and accept all religions.

“What I really want for Luka is when he grows up and someone says to him, ‘I’m Baha’i’ or ‘I’m Zoroastrian’—if he doesn’t know, for him to say, ‘Well, tell me about that,”” Galoob-Ortega says.’

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NPR

Which sounds good in theory, but leaves much to be desired in practice. The founding principle of this group, and apparently hundreds like it, is that ‘all religions are different but come from the same source, God’.

And here’s where I get indignant, and a little nauseated. What a wonderful thing for children to share and discover each other’s worldviews. Less so to teach that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

The children decorated lamp shades with a grab-bag of religious symbols, and took turns placing them on God’s light bulb:

‘”Remember how we talked about how religions are a lot like lamp shades?” [Layli Miller-Muro] asks the group. “They may look different, they may be different colors or sit in different rooms, but they all have the light of God inside of them.”‘

Remember, children: God is like a Swatch watch.

It’s important to me that Ian learn the value and significance of worldviews other than his own. The other side of that coin, however, is discernment: understanding that, according to his worldview, the others are wrong. Not simply special or different. Not neat or fun. Wrong.

And that’s okay.

People don’t like to use that word. Somehow ‘wrong’ has come to mean ‘evil’ and ‘soulless’ and ‘scum of the earth’. But ‘wrong’ is dispassionate and logical. It is a disagreement. A Muslim is not a Christian is not an atheist is not a Zoroastrian. If an atheist didn’t think a Christian was wrong, that atheist would be a Christian.

To teach our children otherwise is a disservice to their intelligence, and an insult to everyone. Our beliefs affect more than how we dress or what we eat or how we choose to spend our Sunday mornings. They guide our lives and our families; how we think, how we love, how we interact. My faith is my relationship with my Creator, and I would never presume to demean another’s faith by saying that, in the end, we’re all the same.

But this is what ‘accept all religions’ has come to mean. We avoid healthy conflict and constructive discourse by taking the easy way out and treating God like Imelda Marcos’ shoe closet.

I pray that my son has more respect for others—and himself—than that.