Making sense of the world

I was brought up as a Christian with varying degrees of dedication. For a long time my family were really quite religious and so we would attend church every Sunday, go to Sunday school and my sisters and I all started our education in a Church of England school. We would say grace before a meal, we had copies of the bible around although bible reading wasn’t forced upon us. I envied my sisters as they were old enough to go to ‘Supersaints’, the church group designed for teenagers in the evenings.

My parents separated when I was nine years old and, as I remember, this is when our family and religion in the traditional sense also parted ways. The faith remained however our church attendance was limited to Christmas Eve Mass and other special occasions and there was no more Sunday school and, perhaps most upsettingly for me at the time, my name would never appear on the guest list for 'Supersaints’.

My family each have their own relationships with faith, spirituality and belief and I have mine. I have been thinking of this a lot recently as my son asks so many questions such as ‘Who made our house?’ ‘Who made that car?’ ‘Who made water?’ ‘Who made me?’ ‘Who made you?’ ‘Who made Grannie?’ ‘Who made this toothpaste?’ ‘Who made the trees?’

My answers are normally are one of the following:

1) A factory

2) Their Mummy and Daddy

3) A clever man/lady

4) Bob the Builder

5) God

Then I had ‘Who made God?’ ‘Where is God?’ ‘Why is God everywhere?’ ‘Why is there only one God?’

OK, I had to decide fairly quickly how much to discuss, feeling rather under qualified to explain such important theological ideas and what I was to fill his head with. More questions it turned out, of course.

My husband was brought up in a relaxed Catholic family and attended a school run by nuns for some time. He has no strong religious views now but is a spiritual and open - minded person across the board. We both want to allow our children to decide what they believe and I think the best we can do is offer answers based on what we know or believe and also make sure the kids know that there are lots of beliefs, all of which are equally valid.

I give full credit to my parents as my guides in what I should and shouldn’t do and I recognise that they brought me up to be a ‘good person’ however, I can’t help but think that I also owe a lot to starting life with such a solid religious education. I was never scared by religion or made to feel intimidated, simply the fact that there was the possibility that something like God existed and would see me and judge me was enough of a deterrent.

My son is now making sense of the world around this ‘God’ I have introduced to his world and he talks about him often.

According to my son, the following is an accurate description of God:

He has two googly eyes

A shiny, round nose

A big, big tummy

2 goobly hairs

He is short with feet as big as my (Duplo) castle

He paints and glues and reads Thomas the Tank Engine books

He gives Karma

He eats potatoes (lots of them) and so that he’ll grow into a big polar bear

He eats, pasta, spaghetti, meat and chicken

He doesn’t go to school as he’s too small

I am slightly concerned that I am confusing him but until I can think of better answers to life’s big questions, this will have to do.