Just to clarify before I begin: Although I do not believe in any sort of religion, I am not hating on the Christian faith or anybody who practices it. However, I have a bone to pick with a lot of Christian parents on the way they raise their kids. My family is very conservative, and my parents raised me and my 2 siblings Christian, and although they are not bad parents, the way they used Christianity to raise us was a fuck-up on their part, and I believe it is a problem for a lot of kids born into Christian homes.
Why?
Because the Christian lifestyle in its entirety--praying before bed, doing devotionals, going to church, having prayer groups, preaching lessons and principles to others, etc.--is based off of one thing and one thing only. The bible. A 3,000+ year old book, made from scraps of paper found in the desert, translated multiple times, and edited by various people throughout the centuries. Full of stories of talking snakes, wooden boats built by a 600-year-old-man, talk of killing homosexuals, and bizarre tales of encounters with a God that nobody in this day and age has really any evidence exists. The bible is not evidence of anything, just as Egyptian hieroglyphics are not necessarily evidence of their fictional gods. Anybody can write about anything, and it is not evidence. Just because a man had some ink and paper 5,000 years ago doesn't make his preposterous accounts evidence in any way. Using the Bible and trying to apply it to modern-day life is like using a broken clock to tell time. It won't work, and doing so is without logic.
I am not saying I do not agree with some of the lessons the bible does contain--treating neighbors as yourselves, or forgiveness. But I am not a Christian, nor do I believe a God of any sort exists. I think it is sad that people actually base their lives on a book that Is filled with pages and pages of rape, murder, wars, torture, and unjust punishments for things we should by now be accepting of today--I.e. homosexuality and premarital sex.
Which brings me back to the topic of raising kids with a Christian faith. When they are adults they may do as they please, but raising kids from birth on a religion that says you should feel ashamed to have premarital sexual desires or masturbate, or that it is wrong to be gay, is not good. That is poison for the mind. Violent, hateful people are not born. They are made. And a bible, as we can clearly see with some hateful groups, is more than capable of doing just that. Like many other works of literature from ancient times, the bible is full of things we know today not to be true. Nobody believes in the Greek gods anymore. But Greek mythology, if you think about it, really isn't any more far-fetched than some of the things you can find in the Bible. So why are we, in the 21st century, still clinging onto the bible and using it to raise children based off of things that are not even true? for example, the punishment of premarital sex in biblical times was to be stoned to death. Yes, having rocks thrown at you until you die, because you had sex before marriage. Because back then, it was considered shameful to have lust. By "God's" law, it was a sin.
But today, we know better. That impulse in our brain that makes those dirty thoughts is what helps us survives and reproduce. Sexual thoughts isn't something you can magically flip on like a switch after your wedding ceremony, it's there since the day we hit puberty to cause us to reproduce. Which is why it is not only illogical but downright wrong to still be teaching kids that they should be ashamed and feel like they've done wrong if they have any sort of sexual fantasy. Because we're turning them against themselves, and making them feel like there is something wrong with themselves.
Not. Okay.
If you want a healthy child, you encourage them to embrace themselves the way they are, and you teach them yourself how to do the right thing, instead of relying on a book to do that, which also happens to be full of terrible things (shall I re-state: people being stoned to death, angels of death, mass genocides, violence, and slavery).
I was raised that way, and trust me, having shame associated with things such as sex has a lasting effect on you, and not a good one. Raising a kid based off of a book that was written by a bunch of delusional nomads and shepherds thousands of years ago is the dumbest form of parenting conceivable. I forgot what we were talking about but I'm sure there is a point in here some where.