Preserving Our Kids’ Spirituality

By Shlomo Maital

          This is a 2021 report from Gallup, the polling company:

         WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.

           So, fewer and fewer adults are regularly attending a place of worship.   This suggests that belief in a Supreme Being is also in decline.

            In my experience, almost all small children believe implicitly in God.   My wife and I have a soccer team plus a basketball squad (plus a sub)  of grandchildren, and the littlest ones believe in God, and ask us questions about Him regularly.

           Writing in the New Scientist, 2012,  Justin Barrett observes:  “Drawing upon research in developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and particularly the cognitive science of religion, I argue that religion comes nearly as naturally to us as language. The vast majority of humans are “born believers”, naturally inclined to find religious claims and explanations attractive and easily acquired, and to attain fluency in using them. This attraction to religion is an evolutionary by-product of our ordinary cognitive equipment.”  In other words, belief in God is highly functional.

            What is it about growing older and maturing, that brings disbelief, cynicism and the loss of spirituality?  Can it be, that we teach our kids only to believe in what is rational, proven, possible, feasible, and according to the laws of Nature?  Religious schools are excepted, of course….

              In this only-hard-facts-please regime, are we depriving our kids of a valuable resource, one they may need and rely on when they get older?

               Our grandson who just turned 6 has a favorite book – of all the dozens of books on his shelf, he loves best the Bible stories book.  He had endless questions about God.  Most of them, we can’t answer.  But it doesn’t matter. 

                I hope his belief in a Creator will survive public school, as he begins Grade One in the Fall.  There are things we should believe in, that are not susceptible to scientific proof.