Stop turning children into prayer warriors, by Stephanie Shaakaa

The astir extremist acquisition you tin springiness a kid is not religion. It is the powerfulness to think.

Across history, the societies that thrived were not those that prayed the loudest but those that trained their young to question, reason, and innovate. Yet successful excessively galore homes today, children are burdened with the relation of supplication warriors earlier they are adjacent fixed the tools to think.

I erstwhile watched a boy, nary older than seven, kneel with his classmates during a schoolhouse assembly. They were told to commune for occurrence successful their exams. When the prayers ended, helium raised his manus shyly and asked, but what if I don’t read? The country went silent. His question was innocent, yet it exposed the bosom of a generational problem. We are teaching children to expect miracles earlier they larn effort, to kneel earlier they larn to stand. Miracles don’t physique bridges, hard enactment does. Do not rise children who hold for breakthroughs rise children who make them.

This is not an statement against faith. It is an statement against outsourcing a child’s aboriginal to ritual portion neglecting reason. When children are taught to trust connected supplication arsenic the eventual solution to each situation earlier they adjacent recognize however the satellite works we hazard raising generations that confuse submission with resilience and dogma with discovery.

In Tiv accepted content successful cardinal Nigeria, teaching a kid Tsav, the exertion of mystical powers was considered an maltreatment of innocence. The elders, omniscient successful their knowing of balance, would ne'er enforce that load connected a child. They utilized their trade to shield their young, not to enlistee them into spiritual warfare. Our ancestors were omniscient people. It was lone successful adulthood, aft a idiosyncratic had lived, learned, and chosen their ain path, that specified matters could adjacent beryllium considered. This contented stands successful crisp opposition to today’s obsession with turning children into miniature prophets and priests earlier they person adjacent learned to usage their ain minds.

The grounds is sobering. A UNESCO planetary acquisition study recovered that countries emphasizing captious thinking, problem-solving, and inquiry-based learning nutrient students with acold higher creativity and innovation scores than those relying heavy on  spiritual instruction. In a period defined by artificial intelligence, clime crises, and geopolitical upheavals, nary magnitude of supplication volition codification a program, cure a disease, oregon negociate peace. Folded hands cannot regenerate trained minds. A federation of supplication warriors cannot vie with a federation of problem-solvers.

Parents accidental they privation their children to succeed. But existent occurrence is not measured by the measurement of their prayers. It is measured by their quality to lick problems, deliberation critically, and navigate complexity. Instead of teaching them to hold for miracles, thatch them the dignity of hard work. Prayer whitethorn springiness comfort, but it does not regenerate the earthy intelligence tools required to physique bridges, constitute code, invent vaccines, oregon turn nutrient connected barren soil. Childhood is not a battlefield, it is simply a laboratory for curiosity. To unit a kid into supplication is to rob them of the astir ineffable gift, the state to wonder.

So if you judge successful prayer, commune for your children, not done them. Pray that they turn up with crisp minds and unfastened eyes. Pray that they find wisdom, courage, and clarity. But bash not shackle their childhoods with the unit of spiritual responsibilities they cannot yet comprehend. Let them larn subject earlier theology, crushed earlier ritual, questioning earlier kneeling.

Because a kid taught to deliberation becomes an big who tin choose. They whitethorn take prayer, oregon they whitethorn take philosophy, oregon they whitethorn take both. But the prime volition beryllium theirs, and that is the existent people of freedom. Faith should beryllium chosen, not imposed. A kid who is taught to deliberation volition 1 time take whether to commune but a kid taught lone to commune whitethorn ne'er larn however to think.

This is not an onslaught connected religion but a defence of childhood, a reminder that imaginativeness is ineffable and curiosity d...