Friday evening my son Michael shared a very interesting piece of news with us, when we asked what he did a school that day. His response was quite unexpected and I wasn’t sure how to react.  His words are etched into my memory as they were quite profound for a child of 8 years old.  He stated, “I wish I didn’t have to go to school assemblies with revered because I don’t believe in Jesus and God and its all lies”.   

As you can imagine it was not the usual type of things 8 year olds tell you about school. My immediate response was “Why don’t you believe in Jesus?” mainly because I wanted to see if he possessed the capability to rationalise what he was saying.   

The answer surprised me even more, because he said “Well… nobody dies and then comes back to life again, its rubbish”. I was so impressed by his reasoning (given his age), that I felt compelled to tell him that he was not obliged to participate in religious assemblies if he felt strongly enough about it. 

Julie and I discussed it in more detail and she was concerned that he would be singled out and picked on by other kids.  It was for this reason we did not request he be excluded from religious worship in the first place.  However this situation is entirely different.  He has elected freely and consciously that he does not wish to participate, and we have highlighted in most strenuous terms that people may take exception to his choice. 

One thing that also came up during the discussion was prayers.  He said, “We always have to say prayers at the end of the assemblies and the reverend gives us evil looks if we don’t put our hands together and close our eyes.  Then we have to say amen, and I don’t even know what it means”.  He also raised concerns that he would be given time out if he failed to comply with the instructions of the reverend. 

He then went on to say, that there is another teacher who when leading assemblies allows non-Christian students to choose if they say prayers or not.  He feels much happier in these circumstances. 

I discussed this at length with Julie, helping her to understand the atheist viewpoint, without attacking her own religious beliefs.  She seemed very concerned that we had somehow unduly influenced him to come to this conclusion.  So we talked to him about why he’d reached the conclusions he did, and he specifically stated that nobody had influenced him, and it was what he thought.   

I also question that if he did not believe in God how should he behave.  His answer was that we should be good to each other and be nice.  This was a good enough answer, but I wanted to see how far his values were developed, so I said “So should you be nice, even if someone is mean to you?”   To which he answer in the positive.   

Still I wasn’t completely satisfied, so I challenged him with a tough question for an 8 year old.  “Why do you have to be nice?” to which I got a puzzled look back.  “What’s so great about being nice?” I probed again.  Still no response, but I could tell his mind was working on finding the solution, so I gave him a slightly different question, asking “How does being nice make you feel?”  This was something he could answer, and he said “It makes me feel good!” 

So having heard these arguments we all agreed the best course of action was discuss this with the head teacher and make the request for him to withdraw from religious worship at school. 

I’m not sure how this will all work out in the end, but there is one thing I am certain of.  What father would not take pride in a son, who can reason and think for themselves, and express values and ideas so clearly at such a young age? I’ve harped on in my blog about being humanist, but the fact that my son has reached the same conclusions without any direct or intentional indoctrination from me or Julie and without the vocabulary to fully express it is impressive.