He who believes will be saved
As a child, I was afraid of a punishing God. When I was young, I donated a considerable amount of my pocket money to the Roman Catholic relief organisation «Fastenopfer» in order to escape the torments of hell after death. Sin was not so difficult in the Catholic Church. In my eyes, it was enough that during the service I preferred to reflect on Pirmin Zurbriggen's ideal line on the Lauberhorn rather than the transformation of bread into flesh.
How do you feel about religion?
My 10-year-old daughter doesn't ask it like that, the famous Gretchen question from Goethe's Faust. For her, it's much more about the most annoying question in human history: «What comes next?»
As an agnostic cultural Catholic, I have no answer. Can you trust a child to do that? The very phrase «agnostic cultural Catholic» sounds a bit like the echo in a sterile operating theatre. I'll try the «magic of ignorance». Which, of course, for a child who would like to know what comes after death, is tantamount to the answer: «I have no idea and I'll just leave you alone in your fear now».
Can I leave my child in this uncertainty? Am I not causing her harm? Perhaps the most important book from a Christian point of view will help. My philosophy professor said at the time: «Those who don't know the Bible don't understand Western culture either.» So this Bible must be pretty important, and not just in a religious context.
Children's Bible versus «Emma Charming»
So I dutifully borrowed a children's Bible. My daughter wasn't terribly interested in the book of books. She preferred to turn her attention to the modern witch «Emma Charming» and has been eagerly awaiting the publication date of the new children's novel ever since (Editor's note: it's 27 April).
But the two older boys have questions for the Bible that have a certain precision in their childlike curiosity: «How can Cain have made children all by himself? Did he have a sister? And, isn't it dangerous to have children with your sister?» You could perhaps ramble on a bit about all-encompassing love and about the fact that the prohibition of incest didn't quite apply to the first humans. But how do I explain the fact that people were killed at God's command because of sexual practices in Sodom and Gomorrah, that Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son to God or that Moses punished blasphemy with death? Ultimately, who can deny that there is a lot of murder and manslaughter in the Old Testament? I can ask myself whether it makes sense to expect my children to go through this.
Tarantino as contemporary cultural education
My philosophy professor was certainly right on an intellectual level that many motifs in literature and film are often only understood against the background of biblical stories. But I can also justify a film evening with Quentin Tarantino's contributions in exactly the same way; after all, Tarantino's work is also relevant for contemporary cultural education. Nevertheless, I don't want to put my children through Kill Bill (yet).
Then there is the New Testament. It is considered to be much more peaceful and can perhaps be reduced to the core sentence: «Be kind to one another!». Yes, I can read a lot into it in terms of liberation theology on the subject of social justice. And yet this book also revolves around the most annoying question and answers it with the hope that those who believe in Jesus will be saved.
But what about more modern issues such as climate change or even gender justice? In the Old Testament, there is above all a man who is supposed to subdue the earth. Can the New Testament help me here? Hmm, of course, with a little imagination I can elevate respect for creation to an ethical imperative. But that still remains somewhat unworldly and does not address concrete demands for an ecological turnaround. And, yes, I can interpret Mary Magdalene as a feminist at Jesus' side, but that also remains somewhat abstract. And children? Haven't they already been left behind here?
Some good children's books
Children want stories. But if I take the stories of the Bible seriously and do not read them in a radically metaphorical way, then the ethics that derive from them are no longer contemporary in my eyes.
As a child, I was much more likely to find an answer to the question «Why all this» in modern stories such as Pippi Longstocking or Ronja the Robber's Daughter. Two wonderful novels with strong main characters that inspire imitation.
Michael Ende's Momo is also surprisingly topical for a young audience. This fairy tale answers the most annoying of all questions with an encouragement to face up to the unpredictability of human life, because therein lies its beauty and in this way we perhaps also become somewhat painfully transformed from children into adults. If the Gretchen question continues to occupy my children and they still want to deal with the questions of where from and where to as teenagers, then I will recommend these two classics to them, which are still on my bookshelf:
Firstly, Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. A novel about the history of philosophy and at the same time a celebration of good storytelling. The second is Theo's Journey by Catherine Clément, a book about the world's religions, which provides a somewhat naïve but nevertheless instructive insight into different worlds of faith.
But what do we do now with the most annoying of all questions? We do what people have always done: We tell stories and we try to be there. At least I think so.
