Religious Education in the FamilyCope, Henry Frederick
Religion
Religious Education in the Family
Cope, Henry Frederick
Families -- Religious life; Religious education
There are certainly two approaches of reality for the child-mind to the
idea of God. Two immediate experiences are rich in meaning; they are the
life of the family and the wonder of the everyday world, the life and
variety of nature and human activities. The first is a very simple and
rich approach. By every possible means help children in the family to
think of God as the great and good Father of us all. Do this in the
phrasing of prayers and graces, in the answers to their questions, in
the casual word. Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is for
the adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on us
like a new day of freedom in truth in later years instead of becoming
ours in childhood and so determining the habit and attitude of our
lives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. God in
terms of fatherhood is the sum and source of all that is ideal in
personality.
The child's keen interest in the world of nature is our opportunity to
lead him to love the gracious source of all beauty and goodness. How
keen is the child's enjoyment of the beauty of the world! Can we forever
fix the general concept of all this beauty as the thought of God in the
words of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not also
connect the idea of God with the affairs of daily life? That depends on
the parent's attitude of mind; if we think of the universal life that is
behind all battles and business and affairs, there will be a difference
in our answers to the thousand curious inquiries that rise in the
child's mind.
Nor must we leave the child to think of God as a separate, far-off
person, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his way
into a universe. The God who is a minute fraction of that universe makes
possible the religion that is no more than a negligible fraction of
life. The child asks concerning clouds, the sea, the trees, the birds,
and all the world about him; he tends to interpret it causally and
ideally. Childhood affords the great opportunity for giving the color,
the beauty and glory, the life of the divine to all this universe, to
instil the feeling that God is everywhere, in all and through all, and
that in him we live and move and have our being. The child's joy in this
world can thus be given a religious meaning. He sings
My God, I thank thee thou hast made
This earth so bright....,
and so beauty and joy become part of his religion. His faith becomes a
gladsome thing; he knows that the trees of the forest clap their hands,
the mountains and the hills sing, and the morning stars chant together
in the gladness of the divine life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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