Talking Religion With Our Kindergartener

I have blogged before on how annoyed I am with Lily's kindergarten shoving religion down her throat. I know, I know, it's in the curriculum. But still, tell the kids the story and be done with it. Don't teach them the songs and don't tell them that this is the reason for celebration instead of one option some people (ok, approximately 1.3 billion people) celebrate these days.

Thanks to the kindergarten teacher's love for religious indoctrination of little children, Lily sang me a very disturbing song while I was making my first coffee of the day and finishing with the statement: Jesus is alive!

Ok, again, thank you, kindergarten teacher. So before my coffee, I sit down with our 5-year old for a talk.

I asked her, what the teacher had told the class about Jesus. She said that he had died and then risen from the dead. I told her, that Jesus indeed had lived a long, long time ago and that he was a very good person who was always nice to everyone, helped people, healed them, and taught them how to create a better society by caring for each other. However, he also thought that he was the son of the god that the Jews worshipped, which is most likely not correct; some people in the government didn't like that the people followed Jesus and also didn't like his teaching so they figured out a plot to have him killed.

She followed me through that, repeated some parts to be sure that he had understood everything, and asked me about the empty grave in the end (thank you, kindergarten teacher, for teaching our daughter about grave robbery). I told her that some of his friends had taken his body away to keep it safe somewhere else, and that his friends, who believed to have seen him after his death were extremely upset and only thought to have seen him. And no, he did not rise from the dead, because if you're dead, you're dead. Except if you're not, and then you're a zombie, added Lily (a zombie conversation that I do not want to share at this point ensued).

While we are Atheists (and no, not one of the ones just waiting for a reason to believe!!) we respect other people's faith, no matter what it may be (ok, except Westboro Baptist, those are just disgusting!!); unfortunately, this is not always true in return. I seriously cannot stand if people, who consider us "lost" try to "save" our girls. We are raising our daughters to be critical free-thinkers, who look at matters from different aspects before forming their opinion. If they decide at some point, that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion is for them, we are standing behind them and support them in this decision. This summer, they will visit a Catholic wedding ceremony for the first time, and I am sure that there will be much to be discussed afterward. I just wished that the government would stay out of how we raise our children!