thoughts out !oud

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Lazy Myth: Christians believe because they are told to

Posted by Mathew | 19 August 08

This Myth has at its core one main assumption: Christians blindly accept what they are told - they are brainwashed. The follow-on for this myth is that children who grow up in Christian households simply adopt - without question - the beliefs of their parents. Seriously, are there any people out there today who still hold to this myth? I know the ardent Reverend (sorry, evolutionist) Richard Dawkins has gone on record as saying that your religion is dependant on where you are born in the world. For instance, if you’re born into a Muslim household, you’ll grow up as a Muslim; if a Christian household, you’ll grow up as a Christian.

With sentiments like that, I do wonder why Mr Dawkins never had aspirations to become a Rocket Scientist - he has such great powers of observation that surely would lend him very well to a change of career, don’t you think? Using his reasoning, those who grow up in a household where there is alcohol abuse are more likely to have alcohol issues themselves, just like those growing up in households where there is a strong work ethic are likely to be productive workers. That’s not rocket science … that’s common sense, I would have thought.

But back to the myth at hand, is it actually true? Could we not equally say that those brought up in atheist or agnostic homes will likewise grow up as atheists and agnostics? To use such reasoning is really a mark of stupidity, I must say. If people say such things today, I really do wonder if they have children at all - I know from experience that children rebel against just about anything you teach them from a very young age … ever tried to get a four year old to eat their vegetables or get dressed for bed or to brush their teeth? Absurd.

However, I agree in general that yes, your upbringing does influence what you grow up believing, but it in no ways categorically defines what you believe at the end of it. The problem with this myth is its categorical assumption. Yet, it is obvious that to claim that someone is a Christian only because that is what they were taught to believe as children is a gross oversimplification.

I was listening recently to a story told by Randall Niles. Randall was someone who was brought up as a Christian and then, on hitting college age, went through college and came out the other side as what he terms a practicing atheist. If Randall’s upbringing was ‘brainwashing’, what was his college education, then? Could it not also be concluded he was ‘brainwashed’ again? Interestingly, due to his mother falling into ill-health with breast cancer later in his life, Randall then found himself with an atheist world-view that offered him (and his mother) no answers and no comfort in such a troubling time. It’s then that he re-evaluates - not just Christianity - but spirituality in general, before turning around and emphatically embracing Christianity as the most credible, rational and intellectually robust world-view that anyone could hold. Listen to his journey in two parts via MP3: part 1 and part 2.

Of course the skeptic may then say ‘once brainwashed, always brainwashed’ … which perhaps could conclude that those brought up in Christian households who then reject Christianity for the rest of their lives were not ‘properly brainwashed’ to begin with? Crazy oversimplified talk yet again. And besides, this myth crumbles under the statistical fact that Christianity is the fastest, organically growing religion world-wide - it’s not that Christian families are having large families and essentially breeding evangelists (which is certainly the case for Islam), but it is purely due to the fact that Christianity is making more converts of non-believers into the Christian faith.

So the Myth that Christians breed Christians is simply turned on its head. Most Christians in our churches today are coming through the doors as thinking, reasoning, mentally mature adults. Today, ironically, it is children being raised in emphatically anti-theistic households and being educated in unashamedly secularised schools, colleges and universities who are blindly accepting what they are told.

And yes, I closed with the last sentence because I know that it rankles most anti-theists’ noses to be accused of the very thing for which they are fond of accusing Christians - the accusation of blind faith.

Fortunately, cataracts can be corrected. Talk to your local Bible-believing Christian today before it is too late.

Read some previous Lazy Myths:

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