[bko]

Whats the alternative for those less fortunate?

I mentored kids for much of my life and you can bet I told them they could be anything they want if they set their mind to it. What should I preach? That they're victims and screwed because of accident of geography/genetics? Is that a useful framework for life?

You can say that you teach them the system is unfair will help them break it. But that amounts to political indoctrination if you're not careful. Instead, teach them to change the world themselves by being kind to those around them.

[tenacious_tuna]

> What should I preach? That they're victims and screwed because of accident of geography/genetics? Is that a useful framework for life?

> Whats the alternative for those less fortunate?

(disclaimer: atheist)

Your stance is a classic of church thinking: remove the agency from the people in the situation, and delegate it to god, saying he will fix the problem __somehow__, but they need'nt involve themselves.

The alternative is honesty and historical accuracy. To try to conceal or ignore what forces in their past have done to minimize them is to make it impossible for them to decide for themselves how they want to deal with these problems--you're removing their agency.

Maybe they'll choose to dedicate their lives to researching genetic problems, or to correcting social injustice, raising awareness of subconscious bias or changing how certain systems in our culture purposefully minimize portions of the population.

This attitude, that being kind to those around them will bring change, while noble, is incredibly naive and shortsighted. Nearly every major social change in United States history was brought about through groups of people uniting and demonstrating their combined force, demanding the rights they'd been denied.

> You can say that you teach them the system is unfair will help them break it. But that amounts to political indoctrination if you're not careful.

Your alternative will lead to stunted critical thinking, and serves only to prevent the questions many deconverting folk have asked of the god they believed in: "How is this fair?", "How could you let this happen?", "How will you fix this?"

[pmiller2]

There is no separating economics from politics, really. If God can't deliver, people have to, and that's inherently a political position.

[bko]

So indoctrinate your children into your current political ideology?

Sure, many people do that. Not exactly a new or novel idea, but personally I'm not a fan.

[pmiller2]

I'm not sure what you mean by "your children" and "your current political ideology," but, no matter what you do, children are going to acquire a political ideology, there's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it, and there's no guarantee at all that you're going to like their ideology. Most of them get at least the initial version of it from their parents. A lot of peoples' ideology gets shaped in early adulthood, when they're either at school or on their own for the first time. My parents didn't raise a communist, but that's what they got, for better or worse.

I have never personally known a clergy member to be particularly political, but we know that a large part of the US is politically driven by religious forces. Like it or not, church and state are not fully separated.

I guess what I'm saying is that none of what I've written here was particularly intended as advice to you in your position as a religious teacher of children. I will say, however, that Jesus himself did have some explicitly political teachings. Matthew 19:24 comes to mind:

> And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Do with this what you will.

[bko]

> I will say, however, that Jesus himself did have some explicitly political teachings. Matthew 19:24 comes to mind

Sounds like there's something you got out of religion after all!

[pmiller2]

No, I have never been religious. I did, however, read the entire Bible in high school for a literature class. Well, okay, except for all those pages of "this dude begat that dude, and so on...." I just mentally substituted "uh, yeah, Methuselah was old and Jesus was descended from King David and all those dudes."

That's not nearly as strange as it sounds, because one really does need to understand the Bible to really grasp the nuances of much of Western literature.