The Girl and Her Religion

by Margaret Slattery

When Wonder suggests its first questions to her they are large questions. They have to do with the Universe. They are eternal and unanswerable questions. They fall from baby lips but they baffle sages. It may be on some bright summer morning that she stands amidst the daisies scarcely taller than they, listening intently to the words of wisdom which tell her that God made the daisies every one, and all the flowers and the butterflies and the cows in the meadows. After a time of silence she puts her question, her clear eyes searching the face of her would-be teacher. "Who made God?" she asks, and while the teacher wavers she repeats her question until some sort of answer comes. That night when she is tucked into bed her mind returns by way of her evening prayer, to the subject of the morning. She hurls another question, "Where is God?" Since she cannot be evaded she is so often told that God is everywhere and accepting it with all the faith of the literalist she begins her search for Him. She strives to solve the mysterious fact that He can be everywhere and yet in all the places where one searches He is not to be found.

Then her grandmother who sat in the sunny room upstairs as long as the little girl can remember is taken sick. Some days pass and her mother with tears streaming down her face tells her little daughter that grandmother has gone to heaven. The mystery bearing down upon the little soul deepens. "What is Heaven?" and "where is Heaven?" she asks. They tell her of its beauties, its peace, happiness and joy. They say that grandmother wanted to go and then they cry again. The little girl cannot understand it all, but she tries. If grandmother is happy and really wanted to go, why does mother look so sad, why the closed blinds, why is everything so quiet? She asks the question in the presence of her practical unimaginative aunt, who bids her be quiet and adds in her even, impressive voice, "Your grandmother is dead." The word has an awful sound and she raises her eyes to the severe face above her and asks, "What is dead?" But the aunt does not answer, and the little girl goes to the window to think it all over. She knows that dead is dreadful—grandmother has gone, the house is quiet, father will not play with her and mother cries. She is only a very little girl but she has met the unanswerable questions, "Who made God? Where did I come from? Where is Heaven? What is it like? What is Death?"

As the years pass her instructors in religion attempt to teach her. In varied words, according to varied creeds they answer or postpone the answer to her questions. She learns that God is good and God is great; that He takes care of people, at night especially; that one may ask Him for whatever she wants and if it is best she will get it; that if one would please God she must be very good and there are many things she must not do; that those who please Him shall be rewarded and those who fail shall be punished.

Her instructors do not mean always that this shall be the sum total of their teachings but stripped of all the songs, the pictures and cards, the birthday greetings, the flowers and stories, these things in the majority of cases sum up the little girl's conclusions. There enters into her religion in many cases that name which seems so often to sound sweeter when murmured by baby lips than at any other time. The little girl has learned to love the Baby asleep in the hay, the Child before whom the Magi knelt, the obedient and lovable boy who played in Nazareth. Then the new outlook comes and the little girl sees Jesus the Redeemer and God the Father. She listens with eager fascinated interest to the stories of what He did and said, tries to obey the commands He gave, suffers for her sins of commission, prays and hopes to be forgiven. The One who searches the hearts of men must find as honest, devoted faith among these little girls as anywhere in His army of believing followers.

Then the spirit of altruism begins to awaken. She is no longer a little girl. She begins to understand the meaning of sacrifice, she is stirred with the desire to serve. Christ the Messiah, the Savior and Master, claims her interest and her heart is filled with desire to serve and to prove her love to Him. She pledges herself to His service, strives to be faithful, suffers agonies of remorse over her failures. Among all the hosts who follow Him there are none more loyal and loving than this girl in her teens.

The years pass and in the later teens and early twenties another world forces itself upon the girl. It is the world of sin and evil, of selfishness, greed and hypocrisy. She shrinks from it but it is bound to be revealed. She catches a glimpse of a world of suffering and pain that makes her heart ache. And while these worlds are pressing hard she is plunging into the secrets of things. The revelation of biology, astronomy, chemistry, the history of peoples, languages and books, the science of economics, and the mysteries of psychology are demanding consideration. Something happens to the bright, sweet unquestioned faith. Questions persist, doubts suggest themselves and demand answer. Nature asks "What do you think about me?" The problems of sin and sickness, accident and injustice ask "How do you explain us?" and darkness settles over the girl's spirit. Sometimes she refuses to think things out and accepts the new explanations of things whatever they happen to be, turning in cynicism from the old. But more often she does think—asking the old questions she faced as a little girl all over again out of a larger world and a trained mind. "Who made God?—what was the very beginning of beginnings?" she asks. "Is it some one or some thing?" "What is Death and what is after that? How am I to know?" Soul, mind and spirit cry out for concrete proof of that which can never be concretely proven.

The thing she needs just here, is the very thing she is most often denied. She needs some one who can show to her the larger God and the greater Christ for her larger world and greater thought. She is losing or has lost her smaller conceptions in the maze of wonders which have been revealed to mind and heart. She needs to know that she has not lost her God, rather is she just beginning to discover Him; that she has not lost her Christ, instead the Christ is just beginning to be revealed to her in all His greatness. She needs some one to make clear to her the meaning of the promise, "Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you." From a new view-point with a larger horizon she may be helped to begin her trustful search for God knowing that truth can never lead away from God. She is just a girl but the Universe is hers in which to seek Him. Its laws, as fast as she can discover them, are her servants to lead her to Him and its broadening horizons but bring her nearer.

When she can face all the new knowledge, feel the shaking of the old foundations, in this spirit of trustful discovery, her doubts will pass away. The world is saved through Christ, not through dogma and if she can have the wise instructor or friend who can show her these things she is safe.

Whenever one thinks of the little girl among the daisies there comes to him in woful contrast the little girl in the crowded cities' wretched streets. She is denied the daisy field. Stars do not tempt her to wonder. The narrow streets filled with material things, pressing close, crowd out sun and moon. The name of God is familiar to her ears but she does not ask questions about Him. She associates the name with loud voices, angry faces and often with blows. Death awakens wonder but there is little time for answers to puzzled questionings. The few days of relief from noise, the expressions of sympathy and friendship, the unusual words of tenderness all make a deep impression—then life goes on as before only harder because of the added expense. As the years pass she accepts the teachings of her church, she can recite them more or less glibly but they have nothing special to do with her life. Philosophy and science do not trouble her. She says her prayers thinking about other things and when she grows older stops saying them, save at church.

Oftentimes as a little girl she receives no religious instruction, never enters a church and the name of God drops in curses from her own lips. Only now and then fear of the future takes possession of her for a moment. Only in great stress of unusual suffering or pain, or in the presence of awful sorrow is her soul stirred to ask the little girl's question, "What is Heaven like?"