Q&A: Educating Children to "Emotional" Faith
Educating Children to "Emotional" Faith
Question
Hello, Honorable Rabbi,
I wasn’t sure how to phrase the title of the question, since I’m not at all sure this is really about emotions, but I’ll ask anyway.
What is your view on educating children toward simple, unquestioning belief in reward and punishment, the World to Come, the coming of the Messiah in its plain sense, and many other such ideas, even if you do not believe in them as they are described?
Do you have an article on the subject?
Thanks in advance.
Answer
I don’t have an article on this. My view of educating through falsehoods is quite negative. Your question seems to me similar to asking: as a capitalist, what do you think about educating a child toward communism?
Discussion on Answer
There’s a difference between educating him about something and letting him remain mistaken in a childish picture without correcting it in order to comfort him. There’s no reason at all to let a child cry just in order to stay perfectly aligned with the absolute truth. You need to use common sense.
But here it’s not a matter of “not correcting” him—I’m asking whether to tell him about the World to Come so that he’ll calm down. This isn’t correction but introducing something new—or perhaps the difference between the two cases isn’t relevant?
It’s the same question as in any other area: should you lie to someone in order to calm him down? I don’t see any difference. Each case has to be judged on its own merits. Just use common sense.
That is assuming you really don’t believe in all this. If you think it may be true but you’re just not sure, you can present it to him as a possibility. That too may be comforting.
Beyond all that, think about a secular home. How do they calm children’s fears without these sacred lies? Apparently it usually isn’t really necessary in normal cases. In other cases, take the child to a psychologist, because your child is probably suffering from some kind of problem.
So if my child comes back from kindergarten and tells me about the World to Come and how exciting it is to him, should I burst his bubble and explain to him that it’s not at all certain there is a World to Come?
Or looking at it the other way around—if my child comes to me in tears and says he’s afraid of death, wouldn’t it be better to tell him about Heaven and wait until he grows up and understands that things are not to be taken literally? Should I just leave him crying? Or is there another solution?