The Shepherd, July 2009
THE RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING OF CHILDREN
By Archpriest S. Shchukin
DIFFICULTIES & MISTAKES IN BRINGING UP CHILDREN
IN THE FAMILY
IN THE DIASPORA, one often hears deeply pessimistic thoughts about the upbringing of our children. They are grieved that the children lose their Russian [Greek, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Arabic, Georgian, etc] language, about the powerful influence of the state schooling, about the bad example of their companions at school, and so on. Some parents, who feel threatened by the complexities of the American [etc.] way of life, even begin to grieve that their children cannot be brought up in the Soviet Union [as it was then]. This, I consider to be an extremely naive and mistaken desire; in the Soviet Union bringing up children at home is incomparably harder, and especially is this the case with their religious education. There the atheistic authorities forcibly attempt to take all education into their own hands, from the very cradle, throughout all of life, even until death itself. How happy many parents in the USSR would be if they could bring up their children on this side of the Iron Curtain! [This part of the article is obviously now dated, but it does remind us that we must make intelligently informed decisions about the circumstances of our life. It was a subject the translator of this piece was talking about only recently with young Romanian Orthodox parents].
We cannot argue that the upbringing of our children in the dia-spora is an easy matter, and therefore we urge parents to apply themselves the task with the utmost seriousness. Every difficulty should only oblige to redouble our efforts for our children and not to buckle under every unfortunate circumstance and difficulty. It is not only in the Orthodox diaspora, but for the whole of America, that religious education is now problematic, and even Roman Catholic and Protestant publications write about this. But with all these difficulties, we must search out which derive from our own particular weaknesses, and then eliminate them, - that is, we must work on ourselves. Without any doubt, many of the misfortunes that parents experience in bringing up their children derive from their own unpreparedness, their own lack of faith, from their own attraction to the material things of life. Others are too self-confident, trusting only in their own abilities, and not turning for help to God nor turning to the Church for advice.
So, for example, some parents spend all their time observing the world around them fearful that it is inimical to them: they feel ashamed of their religion, of their native tongue, even of their Russian [etc] origins. This urge to alienate ourselves from everything in the American way of life around us, we can pass on to our children, and this itself can undermine the roots of an Orthodox upbringing.
In other families, the parents try to carry on the religious upbringing of their children on their own, without the help of the Church. They impart a purely external understanding to their children regarding certain rules and customs, without warming them either with a deep faith, or any understanding of Orthodox piety. All this does little to nourish the children, and does not instill in their souls a real faith and love towards God.
Others, even those in the more religious families, suffer from that half-hearted or sentimental attachment to Orthodoxy that was so prevalent in pre-Revolutionary Russia. They themselves grew up in families, where they only thought of going to church on the greatest of festivals or on family occasions, baptisms, weddings, and during the most severe illnesses. All the rest of their family life drifts by with no particular reference to the Church and with no attention at all to her precepts. With such an attitude towards the Faith it was difficult even in Old Russia to bring up children religiously, and it is even harder in the emigration.
Such parents forget that religion must needs embrace the whole of our life, and not just some “festive corners”! Every such half-heartedness towards religion deprives it of its most important characteristics - wholeness, warmth-zeal, and being uncompromising. Even in ancient times, Tertullian said: “The soul of man is naturally Christian, and cannot find fulfilment with an incomplete faith.” This is even more the case with the soul of a child, which seeks out complete parity between faith and life. Sometimes a child apprehends the fulness of religion, and begins to look upon everything around him with the eyes of faith. Such children sometimes themselves begin to correct the compromises and mistakes that their parents make, and woe to any that would contradict them strictly or slightingly! Doing this will either destroy the wholeness of their childlike faith or will undermine their trust in their parents.
……to be continued in the next issue.
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