We're not a religious family. That's probably a bit of an understatement actually. When I first met B.Rube he often referred to me as "the anti-christ" due to my clear and decided opinion against Christianity. I am an atheist.
My girls are almost 7 and 5, and the discussion of God, church, religion or Jesus has not really come up yet. We talk a lot about our values of kindness, respect, understanding, love, patience, tolerance and acceptance, and have had to address the complicated issue of death. We've discussed things like 'doing unto others' and a belief in karma and fate.
Today on the way home from school, S.Rube read a church sign that we drove by, and asked what "Sunday School" was. Which led to a discussion about Christianity.
I gave them my brief, unbiased, and somewhat ignorant explanation of what Christianity was. (I'm certain that some of my good Christian friends are cringing at the thought of this.) I said that Christians believe that a few thousand years ago there was a man named Jesus who was a leader and who helped people. And Jesus died. And then he came back to Earth. And people believed in him and he believed in the people. And then he left again with a promise that he'd be back. And so today Christians believe that he'll come back at some point (not last Saturday!), and those that believe will get to go with him to Heaven and those who don't believe won't get to go. These people go to churches to pray together and they try to live by following Jesus' rules. Sunday School is where the kids go on Sunday mornings to learn more about Jesus and his beliefs. (Now, that wasn't too bad, was it??)
S.Rube then asked if I believed in Jesus and I told her: No, that I didn't believe in the whole story of Jesus, but that I didn't want to taint their beliefs with my own, and that when they were old enough to explore and understand it, they were always welcome to do so. I told her lots of people believe.
Little T.Rube jumped into the conversation then, pointedly deciding, "I definitely believe."
"Yup!", she says, "I believe in Jesus." And then she looked at S.Rube who was wearing her favourite pants and said, "But I don't believe in capris. Nope. I don't believe in capris one little bit because capris are not real. Jesus is real though. He is."
(Seriously. She may have a point about the capris.)
I sputtered a bit, trying not to laugh outright. Jesus and capris.
A couple of hours later, I overheard T.Rube explaining her new belief system to her dad.
"So, yeah, there was this man who lives on the moon. And he came to Earth and then he died. And he went back to the moon. And if you believe in him, you'll get to go to the moon too. But if you don't believe in him, you don't get to go."
"And I believe in him."
"But I don't believe in capris."
