“A son should inherit his father's money - not his religion; he may be too lazy to build upon a new fortune but never too slow to catch up with a new creed.” ~ Anonymous
“My creed is that; Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll
Yesterday I commented on creeds or core sets of beliefs that form our basis for life and through which we filter the world. Just as a reminder; Creed comes from the Latin word credo to believe, trust, entrust; akin to Old Irish "cretid" or he believes. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as; “a brief authoritative formula of religious belief and a set of fundamental beliefs; also: a guiding principle”
Is our creed negotiable or flexible based our circumstances, financial situation or who we are around? Do you have a certain “moral flexibility” that allows you to blend in like a chameleon with both Christians and non-Christians?
The first quote about children should not inherit their parents “religion” apparently was the case of Robert Green Ingersoll. Ingersoll was an orator and American statesman noted for his broad range of cultural topics and his defense of atheism and agnosticism during the mid to late 1800’s. According to his bio on Wikipedia his creed or outlook on religion was formed at a very young age;
“His father, John Ingersoll, was an abolitionist-leaning Presbyterian preacher, whose radical views forced his family to move frequently. For a period of time, Rev. John Ingersoll filled the pulpit for American revivalist Charles G. Finney while Finney was on a tour of Europe. The elder Ingersoll's liberal views were a source of constant trouble between him and his parishioners. They…several times made him the defendant in church trials. His ministerial career was, in fact, substantially brought to a close by a church trial which occurred while he was pastor of the Congregational Church at Madison, Ohio, and at which his third wife appeared as prosecutor. Upon this occasion he was charged with prevarication and unministerial conduct. The Madison trial occurred when young Robert was nine years old, and it was the…treatment his father received which made him the enemy, first of Calvinism, and later of Christianity in its other forms."
It would appear that John Ingersoll’s creed was based more on his social and political activism than on his ministerial calling. The fact that his third wife was his prosecutor only adds to the incongruity of the story. The end result was that his son Robert became an avowed agnostic who boldly pronounced that happiness and not placing faith in God is the only good.
My children were required to memorize catechisms at their Christian school from kindergarten up to 6th grade. The name of this class section has now been changed to Bible Truths I guess to avoid any confusion with ritual memorization associated with the Catholic church. A catechism is defined as; “oral instruction, a manual for catechizing; specifically: a summary of religious doctrine often in the form of questions and answers, a set of formal questions put as a test: something resembling a catechism especially in being a rote response or formulaic statement.”
I asked my teenage children one morning if they remembered any of the catechisms from their elementary days. Sadly they could remember only one or two. One said that they remembered more geography, (states, capitols and country names) than catechisms. Another stated that teachers told them to memorize them and recite them for more than just a grade but didn’t really take the time to explain them. The other said that for a child between the ages of 5 and 12 they were difficult to understand because they were in Old English, and that his teachers never took the time to explain or define words like justification, sanctification, propitiation and other Biblical terms. I am not using this as a forum to criticize the teachers because as a parent I am more than culpable (Deut 6:5-7) for not explaining these terms to them and allowing them to mechanically memorize something that they clearly didn’t understand or appreciate. The question for each of us is do we understand these terms and can we articulate what they are or how they are achieved?
Wikipedia states; “The purpose of a creed is to act as a yardstick of correct belief. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and deniers of a particular doctrine or set of doctrines. For that reason a creed was called in Greek…meant half of a broken object which, when placed together with the other half, verified the bearer's identity.” As an example the Nicene Creed which was written in 325 AD was to address the Arian controversy that questioned the divinity of Jesus Christ and contradicted the doctrine of the trinity.
Ravi Zacharias has stated that there comes a point in time in every child’s life where "just because I say so" needs to give way to thoughtful discussion and rational explanation. “Because I say so” works in the formative years and around the dinner table, but when a teen or young adult is asked for an explanation of why they have a conviction, preference or standard by peers or the unsaved “because I say so” (or that is what my parents, church or educational institution says) is not a going to be compelling or convincing to anyone. Parents need to be grounded enough in their convictions and know why they believe what they believe or why they have a standard to be able to verbalize it. How are we aiding and developing our children's spiritual discernment if we prescribe standards and preferences without the coupling of a reasoned answer based on clear, solid and defensible biblical truth?
“Some that will hold a creed unto martyrdom will not hold the truth against a sneering laugh.” ~ Austin O’Malley
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