Your Family is What?
30Nov. 08
I see bumper stickers.
Apparently, some of us see dead people, furthermore the blood of dead people. Then they buy a bumper sticker about it. I’ll explain. While lined up at one of Auckland’s many McDonald’s drive-thrus (I’ll just confirm now, I wasn’t getting any food from there, it doesn’t sit well with vegetarians. I’ll also confirm that I’m an Australian living in Auckland) my girlfriend spotted a bumper sticker. The contents of which deserves a new paragraph.
‘MY FAMILY IS COVERED IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS’
Now unless this is some really strange form of satire (it isn’t) and this family were a hilarious parody of creationists (they weren’t); they’re a sign that fundamentalism and blind ignorance is right in my backyard. This came as more of a surprise to me than I had bargained for. I knew that Auckland had a rather strong Christian community, however I was not aware that some of them were mental. Proper mental.
It is not the outward expression of faith that I am offended by – I am outward about my godless rationalism – it’s the fact that any child born into this family obviously gets little to no choice in their faith (or lack of).
The indoctrination of children is an epidemic that Richard Dawkins has openly criticised and derided; stupidly enough I had managed to trick myself into believing that it was something that through some unnatural act had limited itself to the US and Great Britain. I see now the error of my ways.
The problem I feel I face, and one that I think all of us do, is how can we possibly deal with this situation. Is it too much to call this child abuse? Perhaps not. It is a fear-based method of limiting the freedom of thought of these children. Is it over-stepping the line for me, or any of us, to tell someone how to raise their own children? I think so. I’d like to leave this article open, and I wonder just how we as young people can intervene in some way to save the generation that follows us from falling into the same anti-science, anti-intellectual pit that their parents have?
Tags: Fundamentalism, Open Article, Religion
November 30th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I completely agree. Children are born as just children, not as Catholic children or Muslim children.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:54 am
It’s not quite as disturbing as that one, but one pet peeve of mine is the bumper stickets that say ‘Magic Happens’. Cause, like, no it doesn’t.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 am
I think Australia is a lot better than the US in terms of religious fundamentalism. A LOT better. This means that the number of families like in the article are quite small, especially where I live. I rarely see bumber stickers like that, and I guess that, on average, I only see one Jesus Fish a week.
It’s all well and good for us free-thinking people, not influenced by religion, to come out and criticise parents for bringing their children up in what we can plainly see as a harmful way of life, but you have to see it from the parents’ eyes.
THEY THINK THAT IT IS TRUE, and that’s all that matters to them. If subjecting their children to psychological torment about Hell and blaming them for the death of a Jewish man nearly 2000 years ago will get them and their friends into an eternity of paradise, they’ll do it. Some of them don’t even think of it as torment, just a healthy God-fearing upbringing like Mother used to make.
It’s very hard to do something about this. You cannot go to the parents to say “Stop this stupidity!”, you have to reach the children. I think this website is a good way of doing this. A steady infusion of free-thinking into youth culture would also (and is) help(ing).
It’ll be a long process, but it’ll be worth it.
Hey, I feel like an evil conspiritor talking about subverting the thinking of children. Mwhahaha.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Ok. I couldn’t believe that “covered in the blood of Jesus” could be a good thing, or something to be proud of. So I googled, as we all do when we want more information.
According to http://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=48,
“The blood of Jesus represents the death of Jesus, specifically the shedding of His blood on the cross that His people would be protected from the righteous anger of God against them because of their sins and would have forgiveness of sins. Thus they are ‘covered by the blood of Jesus’. ”
The article then goes on to explain other possible meanings of the phrase. About a thousand words later it concludes with,
“This subject of ‘covered by the blood of Jesus’ is a doctrine often explained more fully in many sermons. So place yourself under the preaching of the Word of Christ as a means of grace and get a fuller answer to your question.”
So, the real objective of the bumper sticker is to confuse the reader into becoming a Christian and attending sermons in order to understand the meaning of the damn sticker.
What the…?
December 13th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
May i first just say it’s GREAT to have a Young Australian Skeptics blog to post on!
While i agree with much of your post i do not think the bumper sticker is evidence that ”any child born into this family obviously gets little to no choice in their faith (or lack of)”. There is a false dichotomy there and with all due respect i would like to address it. Without becoming bogged down in semantics, there are a number of ways that sticker may have ended up on the vehicle. My point is, while they may be a christian family who follow Jesus the sticker does not say how liberal a christian family they might be. I agree with Dawkins, children being indoctrinated into their families religion is becoming an epidemi cand they do so with some pretty awful tactics as NaonTiotami mentions in his comment. That is why i agree, it perhaps is not too much to call such indoctrination child abuse, but again it is overstepping the line to tell one how to grow their children. I do hope that fundamentalist attitude does not spread, Auckland is a tad close for me living in Melbourne but to be totally honest i am looking forward to the fight! I love debating Creationists, but that’s besides the point.
That particular sticker is rather hardcore. So how do we stop the forced indoctrination of children? In my own experience studying science at university (in my third year of a chemistry/mathematics degree) has provided me with all the tools i needed to study Christianity objectively, and guess what, i no longer call myself Christian but am very happy being an atheist. So perhaps the old cliche is appropriate, education is the key!
Once again, very thankful to have a Young Skeptics blog to discuss these issues on!