Ben Cartwright April 16, 2001
Since reading Basil�s article called �The Religious Mind�, I have become more attuned to the possible reasons that people seem to have little trouble believing in a God that they can�t see or prove. I hope to offer another insight to this idea, based on some observations I have recently made.
I am a teacher, so I have quite a bit of interaction with first graders. They are wonderful, and as I have watched them, I have noticed something very interesting. In their world, adults basically play the role of �God.� This may seem like an odd thing to say, but consider the fact that in their world, justice is only a few feet away in the form of a teacher. Just today, a little girl came to me and said, �Mr. Cartwright, two of those boys were calling me names at lunch, and then everyone laughed at me.� I never know quite what to do in these situations, but I went to the two boys and asked them if they had been calling this girl names. They said they hadn�t, but another boy beside them confirmed that they had. I told them I didn�t know if they did or not, but that if they did, they had better apologize to her. In this classroom, I informed them, we respect each other. They apologized, and the little girl was happy. Justice had been served.
Later in the day, we were all walking to lunch together, and there was another problem. Another little girl told me that a boy had jumped ahead of her in line. I asked him to move back to his place in line, which he did. When I mentioned it, he instantly looked guilty and had no problem going back to where he belonged.
And so it goes, all day long, in every first grade classroom across the nation. Children know that an adult is never far away who will come and administer justice. To almost all of them, there is someone in their lives who will administer swift, accurate justice.
Now consider that children usually also have a figure in their lives who gives them unconditional love. Parents typically love their children unconditionally. In fact, I have heard many sermons in my life to the effect of, �If your child came to you and had broken a window, wouldn�t you love him anyway? God loves you in this same way. He doesn�t care what you have done� he still loves you.� [Of course, there are many other issues like the idea of hell which seem to contradict this �unconditional love,� but I feel I have sufficiently dealt with such issues in my article called �God�s �Love��] What I am attempting to express here is that children typically grow up with adults in their lives who love them regardless of their actions. Most parents will not kick their first graders out of the house no matter how bad they are, and most parents will not hate those first graders either, even if they are constantly disobeying the rules. [I would like to note here that some parents are arbitrary in their display of love, and also execute disciplines that far outweigh whatever �crimes� the children commit. These parents create a random, frightening world for children, but this does not affect my main point, except perhaps to reinforce it]
So we see that children at this age typically have authority figures in their lives who execute swift justice and love unconditionally. But this is not all. At this age, children are typically handed down morals from �on high.� Their concept of right and wrong comes directly from their parents and is rarely questioned on any rational grounds. The only question is whether they will obey or disobey these moral commands. At this age, children become accustomed to accepting morals from an authoritative source, rather than thinking ethically for themselves. Admittedly, they probably aren�t in a stage of cognitive development which would allow this, but it is nevertheless true. I know from experience that first graders have little understanding of why they can�t take someone else�s pencil, but when someone takes theirs, they become violent. They would prefer to do whatever feels right, but to get by, they usually learn to operate under the (seemingly) arbitrary moral demands of the adult figures in their lives.
There are many other important observations about children�s perceptions of adults. I will skim over a few more. Children typically see their parents as infallible�incapable of doing wrong. How many children have defended their parents at school when their belief in Santa Claus was questioned? �My parents would never lie!� they shout. Children see their parents as providers�they never go hungry, because their parents always give them food. They never need shelter or clothing. Children see their parents as bigger than life� wonderful� beautiful� all-knowing�
Now, let us summarize the ways that children view their parents or other authority figures:
-fair and just
-unconditionally loving
-the source of all morals
-infallible
-providers
-all-knowing
�sound like anyone you know?
Isn�t it true that our distinctions between �child� and �adult� are just terms that describe the same thing�a human being? Is there anything intrinsically different about a child and an adult? No, of course not. So isn�t it possible that once we have learned these mental and emotional patterns involved in our interactions with our parents and other adults, we have a natural need to transfer them to something else as we grow up? Perhaps our mind still has a need for an authority figure who is just, loving, a source of morals, infallible, a provider, and all-knowing. And perhaps once we figure out that our parents are not these things, it isn�t such a far jump for us to believe in an invisible, unquantifiable being who, it just so happens, is all these things. Perhaps there is some level of unconscious disappointment involved in discovering that our parents aren�t what we thought (or hoped) they were. And perhaps our belief in a being who can never be disproven keeps us from ever having to experience that disappointment again.
Something to think about�
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