From the Mouths of Babes

The Jerusalem Trust has discovered some uncomfortable truths about modern children and their understanding of Christianity.

CHILDREN see Jesus as a “rather pallid figure” and are confused about almost every aspect of His life and mission, research has found.

The lack of understanding about the founder of Christianity includes children who believe Christians at Easter celebrate Christmas or even chocolate, and others who think that Jesus died on the Cross “to replenish our sins”.

According to the study, funded by the Jerusalem Trust, a Sainsbury family charity, Jesus has been turned into “a very nice secular humanist, a nice chap, who wanted everyone to be nice to each other”.

Although at face value this appears to reflect once more a lack of subject matter covered in schools (along with history, English language, literature, modern languages and mathematics, if some of the youngsters I’ve talked to are anything to go by), I take some comfort from this. I doubt it pleases those who commissioned the research, though.

Yet, it is so logical. I recall my early days at school when I was first introduced to the Christmas story and subsequently the Easter one. Even at five years of age my inquisitive mind was rejecting the contradictions inherent in both. The physical world around me just didn’t support what were, to me, very nice fairy tales, but that was all they were. I could perceive no more truth in them than in Cinderella or Red Riding Hood. I didn’t believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy either and for the same reasons; such fantastic, supernatural occurrences did not happen in real life – therefore, they did not happen. Consequently, It doesn’t surprise me that a new generation are equally unimpressed.

While most of the children knew that Jesus had a reputation as a caring person, fewer than one in ten believed that Jesus was, or is, God. A third found Him “a bit confusing” and more than a quarter thought him “hard to believe in”. The children struggled to understand Jesus’s death and Resurrection, and resorted to the language of magic to describe him, linking the miracles with the magic tricks of Paul Daniels.

And, interestingly, this:

Many of the other children were guarded about faith, describing it as “too fantastic” or saying there was “no evidence”.

While there are times when I worry about the quality of education received by successive generations who leave full time education unable to string a sentence together and unaware of important historical influences on the culture and development of their nation, its system of government and its place in the world, this is a little nugget of gold gleaming in the dross. Here, at least, is evidence of critical thinking. We should nurture it.