An atheist father writes in to Salon’s advice columnist to ask what he should do about his daughter weeping because daddy is going to hell.
The columnist suggests he buck up and go to church with his daughter. Commenters advise taking her to a different faith community each week, taking her to a UU congregation, and whittling down her evangelicality by ruthlessly pointing out the absurdity of her belief.
Me? She’s thirteen. Being hysterical is in her job description. Daddy needs to put his own beliefs aside for a bit, then put himself in his daughter’s shoes and imagine what she’s going through. And then just sit with her in it. The rest will follow.
In my own evangelical adolescence, I feared for my friends’ salvation all the time. But if they visited my church once or twice a year, that fended of my fear enough that I could put all that aside. I figured that they heard the altar call, so they might have prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” and just not told me. (I never asked though—better to not know!)
Daddy needs to get to church now and then. It will do a lot to ease the pressure his daughter is under.
Sometimes evangelicals can be distracted by a little dollop of disguised Universalism: “If there is a God, surely his love and mercy is greater than our own; so if you as a child of God love me, God’s love for me must be even greater than yours.” Using the conditional “if” makes it safe even for atheists to say.
We had a rather fundamentalist babysitter for a time, who attended a Conservative Baptist church and asked her pastor once about the condition of our souls. His answer was similar — something about how born-again Christians know how they themselves are saved, but it is not their place to know where God sets the limits of his mercy toward others.
Wise words, coming from a fundie.
I think your advice is very wise.
You may be interested in seeing the response to this story on the “Friendly Atheist” blog (the blog’s author is the author of “I Sold My Soul on eBay”):
“Worst. Advice. Ever.”
http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/10/04/worst-advice-ever/
He should talk to his daughter, and if he goes to her church it should be to better understand what she’s experiencing every Sunday. But I don’t think he should pretend to believe what she’s believing to make her feel better. But he can engage with her and explain why he feels differently.