on Nov 4th, 2007Grandparents Possess Power to Convert Their Grandchildren Into Religious Zealots
Feeling powerless in your old age? Unwanted? Left out of the family action because everybody moved into the big city leaving you behind to watch the squirrels attack your bird feeder in the country? Buck up, my friend, you do have power. Research shows that the grandparent-grandchild relationship offers a special bond for forging the religious identity of your grandchildren, especially in those cases where interfaith marriages sit on the faith fence, unsure of how to raise their offspring.
Consider this: “Grandparents, as it turns out, can play an important role in helping forge the religious identity of grandchildren whose parents have different religious backgrounds. One of the reasons for this is that the grandparent-grandchild dynamic, which is typically based on unconditional love, often differs from the parent-child relationship.”
See how that works! Exploit that unconditional love in exchange for converting your grandchildren into ardent believers in your belief system just outside the nihilistic eye of your own children. Whether the child grows up to make a decision about their own faith seems moot in most cases because the indoctrination of the soul is complete by the time they come of age. Not to worry, though. There’s plenty of time for acting out against an imposed faith.
Bottom line: the human mind is quite capable of embracing or rejecting that with which it does not agree…so proselytize to your heart’s content. Shalom.