Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: aws@itivax.iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Taking God Seriously Message-ID: Date: 15 Nov 89 08:10:32 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow Lines: 38 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jko@hila.hut.fi (Jukka Korpela) writes: >I suppose children do not believe in the existence of Aslan & others >unless their parents and teachers present them as existent beings. >But Santa Claus is very often described to children as a real thing, >as real as God. Which is what we did. For the first 4 years of my daughters life we spoke about Santa like he was real. My daughter believed it all. Later we became neutral on the subject and just agreed with whatever she said. When she came up this year and asked if Santa was real. We asked her what she thought and she said she didn't think he was real. We agreed. But you know what? I am convinced that her belief in Santa tought her a lot about faith and altruism. When she was 3 and 4 her favorite game around Christmas was to play Santa. She would collect all her toys, put them in a pretend sled and pretend to give them to all her friends. She became concerned that other children less fortunate than her had a happy Christmes. None of this has affected her belief in God one bit. I think it is like teaching complex subjects to children. When I was little I was tought that an atom was some protons with electrons in orbit around it like planets around the sun. In reality it is nothing like that but I could have never understood it then. Unsing Santa we can teach our children about complex Christian values in a way they can understand. >The point is that when they find out that their parents >and teachers lied about Santa Claus they tend to think that God and Jesus >are a similar case. Not my daughter. Allen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Allen W. Sherzer | Is the local cluster the result | | aws@iti.org | of gerrymandering? | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------