Have I been brainwashed?

'What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore that is what you believe. That's child abuse.'

Richard Dawkins

According to Richard Dawkins, I have been brainwashed. While perhaps not everyone would go as far as he does, I don’t think it’s uncommon to assume that children will just believe whatever religious truths their parents tell them. Even other Christians I know sometimes assume I accepted my parents’ faith unquestioningly. But those of us from Christian backgrounds don’t all pop out of the womb reciting the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit..."

Like many of my friends from Christian families, I only fully accepted my parents’ faith as a teenager.

I wonder if Richard Dawkins has forgotten what it is like to be a child. Of course, children are more likely to hold irrational beliefs. Most children believe in Father Christmas just because their parents tell them it is true. But even young children eventually question that belief. And if a child questions what their parents tell them about Santa, why wouldn’t they question was their parents tell them about God?

As it happens, I questioned the existence of God a few years before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. I remember coming home from church one Sunday and wondering whether God existed. I was perhaps three or four, maybe even young. I decided at that moment that God did exist. While I seem to remember having a vague idea that God must be the explanation for everything around me, I doubt I had any clear reason for coming to that conclusion.  I’m not sure anyone at that age would have been able to make a rational decision about the existence of God. But the fact that I even thought about it shows that I was able to accept or reject what my parents told me about God. I chose to believe in God. Though that choice may have been influenced by the beliefs of my parents, it was nevertheless a choice.

As a child, I always knew that most people didn’t share my belief in God. After all, it’s not like I grew up in a monastery. I grew up in a working-class community with just two small churches. There were perhaps 50 or 60 Christians out of the 3000 people living in Maerdy.

At school, I couldn’t avoid being challenged about my belief in God, particularly not when everyone knew that my father was a ‘priest’ or ‘vicar’ (though technically he was neither). My classmates loved to tell me that what I believed was a load of rubbish. And, like any child, I was more than happy to tell them that they were wrong. Even in infants’ school, I was asked questions like ‘Where did God come from?’ and ‘Doesn’t science explain everything?’. I hear the same objections from adults today. If anything, the kids on the school bus were more sceptical than most atheists I know. Those children questioned whether Jesus had even existed.

Although I have believed in God since I was three or four, it wasn’t until the age of thirteen or fourteen that I became a Christian. It’s not that I didn’t believe in the core truths of Christianity. I didn’t doubt that Jesus was the Son of God who had died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven. I was sure that He had risen from the dead, meaning that those who believed in Him could go to Heaven. I thought of them as facts, but nothing more than that. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus seemed irrelevant to me. It had less of an impact of my life than my beloved Doctor Who.

When I became a Christian as a teenager, I finally understood that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection restored the broken relationship between man and God. I realised that I could have a personal relationship with God if I accepted that Jesus had died for me on the cross. I had always been told that I needed to respond personally to Jesus’ death on the cross. When I finally I did respond, it was again my own choice to do so.

Not all Christians from church-going backgrounds will have a similar story to mine. I know plenty of ‘cradle Christians’ who can’t remember a time when they didn’t believe. That doesn’t make them gullible. In fact, many of the brightest Christians I know can’t remember a time when they didn’t believe in Christianity. Ultimately, they have made a decision to carry on practicing their faith into adulthood. Others have not.

As a child, I knew that I believed in God without knowing why. Twenty years later, I know exactly why I continue to believe in God. And while I never really questioned the core beliefs of Christianity in my childhood, I know now why I continue to believe them.

I haven’t been brainwashed. When I came to a belief in God, I knew perfectly well that not everyone shared that belief. When I became a Christian, I did so not because my parents forced me to, but because I had decided that I needed to follow God. Ten years later, it’s a decision I make, with the help of God, every day.