Religion is not a friendly topic — Nanay

I better write this before I get snowed under again. The company that showed the bride kidnapping in Krygyztan, has this segment called Cutting Edge. I manage to catch it’s latest offering called Baby Bible Bashers. If you thought, abducting women and forcing them to marry strangers is a disturbing TV moment, watching a toddler evangelise in front of an abortion clinic is just painful.

The show presented three kids: Samuel, 7, from Mississippi, Terry, 9, from Florida, and Ana from Brazil who started preaching at the age of 3.

All three kids had a common denominator, zealots for parents. Bringing up God-fearing children is something most Christian parents wish to be. But in this case, these parents went and sowed fear in the hearts of their children. These kids carry guilts the size of the world and they are tasked with impossible responsibilities. And all the parents seemed convinced that their kids are the ones who started it all. It’s a common theme, the kid “want to do it”. They feign surprise at how their kids apparent fervour.

When Samuel asked his dad if he was going to Hell, his dad said yes. And they certainly do not spare the rod even when Samuel invokes his mum “not to lay her hand” on him. The show followed the father and son to New York, a holiday treat, where they were to preach to all the homosexuals and fornicators and all other miscreants. Is this really the act of a responsible adult? This child is growing up with a distorted sense of right and wrong. It is Christianity applied to the extremes. Oh yeah Samuel’s past times on weekends is to stand in front of their local abortion clinic and shout “Do not kill your babies!” And honest the parents do not encourage him. Seven year-olds are just too darn stubborn these days.

Then you get Terry, the youngest ordained minister in the world. His growing fortunes required a Board to handle his finances. He’s the boss and his dad and grandma are board members. They showed t-shirts, frames, signed pictures, and all sorts of merchandise for sale, most bearing the slogan “Little Man of God”. Clips were shown with him laying hands on people who obediently collapses. Some people claim Terry healed cancer, the lame, what-have-you. And in a really telling shot, Terry said that sometimes he stops and thinks whether it is him or God who is speaking, but in the end he said he decides it must be God. Then a few minutes after those words, he was shown shouting “I’m famous!” before jumping in the pool. He is a kid, afterall, which is far from what you can say about his dad. This man has a clear plan for his son’s future, along the lines of Terry having his own ministry with thousands of members and his contribution coffers just growing I’m sure.

The saddest story was Ana’s. She’s very close to her dad, so close in fact that he sleeps with her every night, while the mother sleeps in another room. Ana is now an adolescent. It made me cringe when his dad mentioned a night when Ana “fought Satan himself” and that she was very tired the following day. I’m probably just dirty-minded.

But in call three cases, no matter how hard I tell myself not to judge, for me it is undeniable that these kids’ childhood has been stolen and shattered. When they become adults, you know they will never be “normal”, their parents never wanted them to be so. It is a scary thought to think of what they will become if they stray from what they believe in now. Fanatics? Laughing stock? Will they be able to accept that they cannot change the world?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 12:33 am and is filed under katakot, parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.