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Episode 3 - “Interfaith Family: Marriage & Parenting with Mutual Respect”
61 Plays9 months ago
In today’s episode, “Interfaith Family: Marriage & Parenting with Mutual Respect”, I sat down with secular Humanist Steve Ghikadis and talked about his marriage with his Christian wife and the trials, tribulations, and mutual respect they’ve experienced whilst raising their two wonderful children with very different world views.
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Transcript
Introduction to Humanism and Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to the Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the Humanist lens.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to The Conversation.
Interfaith Family Dynamics
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm Jared W. Clegg. In today's episode, Interfaith Family, Marriage and Parenting with Mutual Respect, I sat down with secular humanist Steve Jakedis and talked about his marriage with his Christian wife and the trials, tribulations, and mutual respect they've experienced while raising their two wonderful children with very different worldviews. Let's begin.
00:00:53
Speaker
All right, thanks Jared, and thanks Betty-Ann.
Steve's Background and Journey to Humanism
00:00:56
Speaker
I'm Steve Chakadis, been a Humanist Canada member now for a couple of years, and I'm in the Efficient Training Program that I know Jared has already gone through, and Charis, I believe as well, and Betty-Ann also does Efficient work. So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing that, and I guess I'll just get started on this so that we have as much time as possible, and I will share my screen if I can find where to do that, because it disappeared, there it is.
00:01:21
Speaker
Cool. Normally, if someone's name is Mike, I always say, is there a Mike in the audience? And then I just have them put up their hand and say, Mike, check done. But there's no Mike today. So all right. So this is going to be weird. You can kind of see me popping up here on the corner here. But basically, this is just me. I have a Bachelor of Education from Nipissing University. And I'm also a Bachelor of Arts in History from McMaster.
00:01:48
Speaker
And I'm just going to get started on the next slide, which is what we'll be talking about today.
Navigating Interfaith Marriage
00:01:54
Speaker
So between Jared and myself here, we can just kind of touch base on all these things and then we'll get into it. So we're just going to start it with, you know,
00:02:03
Speaker
Is this a perfect marriage? Who knows, right? But I'm going to give a brief synopsis of my story. And then we're going to go through the understanding differences and finding common ground, building a strong foundation within the marriage, statistics on interfaith unions that are
00:02:18
Speaker
mostly just going to focus on Canada. And then parenting with compassion, openness and acceptance, the best practices for raising free thinkers. A lot of those I get from the author Dale McGowan, who's a friend of mine now. I reached out to him. And that's just part of my story. So I'll get to that in a second. And then I got some resources for mixed faith relationships and for secular parenting as well.
00:02:43
Speaker
So my story, so my mom is actually here in the meeting today. Her name is Anita, and she accidentally raised me as a free thinker. And I always joke about that, but it's true. I was baptized Anglican, but I never really believed anything to do with the religion. We weren't a very religious family. We mostly just, I guess we were priesters going on Christmas and Easter, and then just kind of once in a while in between, but nothing major.
00:03:12
Speaker
And my parents' divorce when I was young, my father, after a few years of struggling with addiction and things like that, ended up finding religion so that when I was younger, about six or seven years old, he would once in a while take us to his church and we'd have to do the Sunday school thing. And it just, I never bought it. It never, never made sense to me at all. So I grew up as mostly in a,
00:03:38
Speaker
apotheist, I call it. So I just didn't care one way or another about religion. It just didn't really affect me. It wasn't really a good thing in my life. And I also grew up in Muskoka, which again, is a very apotheist area.
Challenges with Religious Organizations
00:03:50
Speaker
Nobody really cares about religion. Not kind of like where I live now in the Bible Belt, but I'll get into that in a second. So I grew up, I went to high school. And again, just nothing ever occurred to me when it came to religion. My grandfather was a Mason, a Freemason.
00:04:07
Speaker
So I always talked to my grandmother and my mom about potentially becoming a Freemason later on when I was of age. So part of the whole thing with the Freemasons is that you have to declare belief in a higher power. So I thought, sure, I can say that. It doesn't really bother me one way or another. And maybe there's a God or maybe there isn't. I was culturally Christian, just an apotheist.
00:04:33
Speaker
And so I went through the questioning process and they said, do you believe in a higher power? And I said, yes. And then they asked all these questions and all this background stuff. And when it came to the actual meetings, I realized how religious it actually was. So part of the thing is when you start, they blindfold you, they bring you in a room and they say, you know,
00:04:53
Speaker
kneel down at this altar and everything, and then they say, where do you put your faith or where do you put your devotion or something like that? And someone whispered in my ear, in God. So they wanted me to say that out loud. So I said it like with a question mark, in God? It was kind of a weird situation where I felt like, OK, maybe this isn't what I'm
00:05:21
Speaker
Maybe I could get into something that's not really aligning with my belief system and my worldview. So I stayed with them for a few years. So I got through to the Master Mason program. And during that time, I also met my wife. So I was at a friend's party.
Cultural Practices and Marriage
00:05:37
Speaker
They were having a party for their boyfriend at the time. And I saw her coming down the stairs. I was like, oh, she's...
00:05:44
Speaker
really good looking girl and I want to find a way to talk to her, but I'm like, I'm kind of shy. I don't know what to say. So when everyone was saying happy birthday, I grabbed a piece of the cake and I smushed it across her face and I didn't say a word to her. That was how I introduced myself. And so basically she was just staring at me in shock and I was eating the cake off of her face and apologizing for it. And I was like, well, maybe I kind of made a fool of myself. So I'm going to go upstairs. So I went upstairs. I turned around and she's right there.
00:06:11
Speaker
And we were talking and chatting and we ended up talking all night. I was the DD that night. I didn't drink at the time. Actually, I didn't really drink until I had kids. You know, a lot of people probably get that. And I also didn't have the gray until I had kids as well. So but yeah, no, so we talked all night.
00:06:28
Speaker
We ended up going out to the different bars, and I was driving everyone around, and I made sure that I was dropping her off last. She was the last person to be dropped off because I wanted to say, hey, let's go out sometime. So I asked her for her number. I had a really good time. She said, me too. And I said, I'd like to have your number. So she gave me your number. And you're supposed to wait a week or two or something like that to give her a little bit of a waiting period. But I called her the next morning. I said, I'd like to really go out and do something. And she said, oh, I'm skiing today with friends. So I thought, OK, she's blowing me off.
00:06:59
Speaker
And that night she ended up texting me and said, I'm a free Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So we hung out every single night of those. So that's kind of our how we got started and how we met each other.
00:07:11
Speaker
When it came to our talking about religion, it never really came up. It was kind of one of those things that, again, being culturally Christian, I was in the Masonic Lodge. Their official church was the United Church in Bracebridge. And she was also kind of going to the United Church, but kind of just on a whim once in a while. And once in a while, she would go to church. And I had a friend from the Masonic Lodge that also went. So I'm like, sure, I'll go along. So we kind of just started going to church together, just as something to do on the weekends.
00:07:41
Speaker
And then when we got really serious and I proposed to her, I had just gone to
00:07:50
Speaker
We were considering moving down to where her family lives, so we ended up getting married. During our wedding, it wasn't supposed to be really overtly religious, but it was just by the nature of it. It was in her family's church. It was with their minister, and our vows had to say God in them. That was part of what they wanted it to say, so we had to do that.
00:08:13
Speaker
And it wasn't until I kind of midway through the wedding at like the speeches and stuff her parents who I absolutely adore. And we lost my father-in-law earlier last year. It's left a big hole in our family and in our hearts. But both of them got up and they said, you know, we're so glad that she met a man who shares exact same beliefs that she does.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I kind of felt like a wolf in sheep's clothing, because I'm like, I don't really. So maybe it's time I need to start telling people I don't really believe it. So, you know, and when we moved down there, we were kind of going to church as a big family. And I kind of said to my wife, like, I don't know if I can continue going to church. And it kind of brought up that conversation where we kind of had a little bit of a
00:08:54
Speaker
We didn't see eye to eye on things for a long time. And I was really searching for something that could help me. And I came across street epistemology. Anthony Magnabasco is a big practitioner of this. And it's having respectful conversations without raising someone's like, hackles. Because you just gently question why people believe what they believe.
00:09:15
Speaker
and that seemed to work really well for having those conversations and then also I came across Dale McGowan and Dale McGowan is an author and he's a professor of music actually and he lives in Atlanta Georgia and I reached out to him and I said you know help I need help I see that you've written all these resources on interfaith marriage and relationships from different world views and he really did help me he
00:09:41
Speaker
hooked me up with his book and his podcast and how to have those respectful conversations and what to do. So basically, that's where I started following his practices and just kind of made it my own and ran with it. And we got to a point now where we mutually respect each other's position and worldview.
Finding Common Ground in Mixed Faith Relationships
00:10:04
Speaker
And that's basically where we can go next.
00:10:10
Speaker
So understanding the differences and finding common ground.
00:10:14
Speaker
So these are some exercises that you can use to find commonality in your relationship. So you can ask your partner what the benefits are to having a mixed faith relationship. And then you can also ask them what the disadvantages are to having a mixed faith relationship. And then you can read the tenants of your partner's church and see if you agree or disagree with them. Because sometimes you do agree with the majority of what people believe in their doctrine. I found that with the United Church, I think it's like about,
00:10:44
Speaker
two thirds of it I actually agree with and you know one third I don't agree with because it comes to the the god stuff the you know Jesus being the way and that type of thing but all the other ones are very respectful and it's about you know allowing people to interpret things the way they want to and then you can also ask your partner to go through their church's tenants and c-plus ones they agree with and which ones they don't so when it comes to
00:11:10
Speaker
our answers for the benefits and disadvantages of our interfaith relationship. Her answers were the kids get to hear about different worldviews as one of the benefits. And it's funny because I had the same thing. That was, you know, we both answered that question exactly the same. And we both get the kids get to hear about the different worldviews. And we'll get into that in the parenting as well.
00:11:29
Speaker
And then so she also said I get to see that atheists can be good people because a lot of times people don't don't see us as good people they're just like oh you're you know anti-christ or you're you know against um goodness basically um and then you know going along with that I have a compassionate look on religious people so I can kind of see um the same type of thing where you know
00:11:52
Speaker
it depends on what type of person you know they can be so it's like if it's someone like Kenneth Copeland obviously you know trying to see the humanity in that person is a little bit more difficult than you know someone off the street that may be just a Christian that believes you know for their own reasons but it's um
00:12:10
Speaker
It's definitely given me a better outlook on people on a person by person basis.
Community and Humanist Activities
00:12:18
Speaker
So the disadvantage is that she feels like she can't be as good of a Christian as she wants to be. And it was really good for me to hear this because then it allowed me to say to her, well, why don't you go to church on Sunday or why don't you
00:12:28
Speaker
you know meet up with your friends or why don't you go to bible study or something like that it gave me the insight to say okay well what is it that you're trying to get out of this because maybe we're trying to get it get the same thing um you know community and stuff like that just from different perspectives and then another thing that she says it is a disadvantage is that she always dreamed about going to church as a family
00:12:48
Speaker
So the cool thing is, is that now that everyone knows that I'm non-religious, if I show up at the church, nobody's just going to expect to, you know, attack me and say like, oh yeah, you come to our church and this that and the other, everyone kind of knows. So once in a while I'll go with her or I'll take, you know, we'll go as a family or even this past Christmas, my son was in the Christmas
00:13:09
Speaker
play with the Sunday school. And I went and watched them. I went behind the scenes and helped them with this costume and stuff like that. And everyone there is super respectful knowing that I don't actually believe. For disadvantages for myself, I love talking about religion and philosophy and she does not at all. So that's one thing that I find is a disadvantage. So I have to
00:13:28
Speaker
you know, talk to people like my mom all the time about this stuff or, you know, reach out to friends that share the same worldview as me just so I can talk about it because she doesn't like talking about it at all. And I want to be able to complain about religious aspects to secular ceremonies. So like when Remembrance Day, when they're there and they're talking about, you know, God, this and Jesus, that and Abraham hit him with a wiffle ball bat, that type of thing. I just, you know, I can I can hear
00:13:50
Speaker
that stuff and want to complain about it, but I can't. And with Scouts Canada, my son's in beavers right now and they always do like religious prayers and they always say like, you know, God this and God that. And it's just a little bit annoying because we are in a secular society. So it should just be, you know, secular when it comes to that. I know that Scouts Canada was founded by Baden Powell, who was very religious, but I mean, they should be shifting away from that. Cause I know the, uh, the girl guides are, are shifting away and becoming more secular. So great.
00:14:22
Speaker
the wrong thing here. Okay, so this is another fun exercise that we did. Basically, we just started saying words about our relationship and about our family and stuff like that, that ring true to us. And we made this word map. So I was like, you know, say it showed us some words. So she's like marriage, kisses, adventure, home, children, dancing, love, always adventure, games, support, that type of thing.
00:14:47
Speaker
Religion didn't even come up. God didn't come up. Jesus didn't come up. Nothing, right? So this is all stuff that has to do with us. And this basically shows us all the things that we have in common as opposed to the things that we don't have in common. And that's the biggest thing when it comes to having
00:15:02
Speaker
respectful conversations and just the relationship in general is focus on what you do have in common and less on what you don't have in common when we always joke like the beginning of the universe. We think that the beginning of the universe was started in very different ways, so that's something we don't really focus on. Okay, so let's take a look at some numbers.
Interfaith Marriage Trends in Canada
00:15:24
Speaker
So if we're in Canada, interfaith marriage, we have no state religion, obviously, and it's committed to religious pluralism in a post-secular context. Christians make up 53.3% of the population, but if you break that down, Catholics are 29.9%, and Protestants are only 23.4%, and that's both below the nuns. So if you look on the right side here, where it says no religion, 34.6%, it's higher than both of those Christian groups right there.
00:15:51
Speaker
So that actually equates to one in three Canadians considering themselves to be unaffiliated with any religion. So it's a growing demographic that we're trying to focus on with Humanist Canada, right? Like the people that need to have that community or need to have a voice. It's one in three Canadians.
00:16:07
Speaker
So according to Stats Canada, most mixed unions are more likely to be young, highly educated, higher median income, and live in major census metropolis areas. I'll explain that in a second. One of four Canadians are inter-religious unions, which is 27%, which makes sense.
00:16:25
Speaker
you know, based on the numbers. And as a percentage of the population with no religion, it's grown from 34.6% in 2021 from 7% in 1981. Inter-religious unions were where one partner professes no religion has decreased to 20% in 2021 from 38% in 1981 as the availability of potential no religion partners has increased. So that makes sense when you think about there's more non-religious people. So the number of inter-religious unions would shrink.
00:16:55
Speaker
And then, so why is this happening? Why is it more prominent? So in the past, it wasn't unusual for people to grow up, sorry, yeah, it wasn't unusual for people to grow up in a small community surrounded by people of the same faith. So that's a major one, right? So going along with that, the neighborhoods used to be sectioned off by religions. So there'd be like a Protestant neighborhood or a Catholic neighborhood or Muslim neighborhood. People used to move around once or twice in a lifetime, usually within the same community. And now people move on to allow an average of 11 times in a lifetime.
00:17:23
Speaker
So do the schoolwork and family leaving the community. So college and university are usually the first opportunity to experience different worldviews and attendance is up 200% since the 1950s. And this is around the age when people started thinking about serious relationships, marriage, and even questioning their faith at that point. A lot of people in college university, that's the years where you really start thinking for yourself because you're getting away from those influences of the family. And today, three out of four people are living in communities with significant religious diversity.
00:17:53
Speaker
So it went from, you know, being in a neighborhood where you're just completely all Christian to neighborhoods where it's mixed. And that's one of the reasons why people are shifting so much. Okay. So that's the end of the marriage section. Does anyone have any questions so far? If not, we can move on to the parenting. Well, it just seems, uh, like a lot of, like you just answered a lot of people's questions by having a fantastic presentation.
00:18:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, there's always there's always things that, you know, that I can I can talk about trying to keep it down to that one hour period. So just trying to focus on the main point. So if there's any smaller stuff that need to be focused on, I can definitely. Betty Ann, you have a question. Well, I do. I wonder how you.
00:18:36
Speaker
I'm going to word it this way, how you let it get that far. Didn't you have conversations earlier on in your relationship that you actually got to the altar or were there assumptions made in your relationship about how the other one felt?
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. And looking back now, yes, we did, but it wasn't significant. And to me, it wasn't a thing that I ever took seriously. So it wasn't, like I said, I was an apotheist. I didn't care one way or another about religion. And she didn't really care to see, seem to care that much about religion either. I guess she did internally and maybe with her family, but she wasn't overtly religious. She wasn't someone who was like, you know, you need to believe in God or Jesus to go to heaven or anything like that. That was never brought up.
00:19:17
Speaker
Um, you know, she would say things once in a while that seemed like religiously toned. But again, we're in a cultural Christian society where, you know, that kind of language is talked about all the time. People say, bless you when you sneeze, you know, just out of, um, out of the culture. So that was kind of one of those things where it didn't really come up in a significant way that would have made me think maybe this is, maybe we have like conflicting worldviews. Um, it was, it was very, um,
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how else to say it's just very, very small things would come off and never became a big issue. Caris, did you have a question? Yeah, I'm wondering, how does she feel about you becoming an officiant? How about taking over those roles that the church has always had and life passages for people?
Humanism Beyond Religion
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, she's actually really pumped for me. And that's the really cool thing is that, you know, when we're at a position now where we mutually care about each other's belief system and not necessarily the beliefs themselves, but just, you know, I can respect her as a person and what her thoughts and differences are. And she respects me as well, but she's also very pro LGBTQ. She's very pro, you know, people,
00:20:32
Speaker
finding love in any way possible. So, you know, me being able to provide marriages for people that may not be able to get that elsewhere. And just, yeah, things like that. She's very, very open and very caring about other people. One thing that we do here with the Humanist Canada Windsor chapter is we go to the homeless shelter and we feed people. She thought that was such a good idea and her mom actually thought that was a great idea and her mom is very
00:21:00
Speaker
she helps a lot with the church and she even leads the Sunday school program and stuff like that so they were really pumped about that they really wanted to come out and help us with that as well so my wife and kids ended up coming and and there's a picture of us in here doing this too but they came down with me to feed the homeless you know under the Humanist Canada banner which is kind of neat. Very interesting it sounds like without you giving her any pressure at all she might slowly start to
00:21:27
Speaker
to slide because of the sensitivity about LGBTQ and all the rest of that, because you'll see that humanism is more embracing than a lot of religions. Unitarians are, I mean, the United Church is pretty embracing, but a lot of churches are not.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing I talked about recently on Canadian Atheist podcast, and then I was also on the radio down here at AM 800 with the Dan McDonald Show. We talked about that, that humanism seems to be like the underlying thing under anyone who wants to lead with kindness and focus on the human dignity and human respect aspect of things.
00:22:08
Speaker
um above the religion. I mean you can still be a Christian and be considered a humanist because the the uh coordinator down here who does the street help like where we helped out she's a lifetime Canada humanist Canada member she has her card and everything but she considers herself a Christian but she's had people there that are ministers and priests and they'll say like oh this person needs to do a prayer first before they get a meal and she goes no they don't get out of here.
00:22:30
Speaker
Right. So she's focusing on the human aspect of it before the religion. And I find that with Cindy, she does that as well. It's like, you know, she's more about the human dignity and respect and compassion when it comes to that and less about the religion. And if you look at the statistics,
00:22:48
Speaker
statistics too. A lot of times people go to church. It's not for theological reasons. It's mostly for the community aspect. So if they can find community elsewhere, like we're providing, you know, they are more likely to shift and maybe not become atheist, which is not our goal. It's just that they're going to focus more on the human aspect of things as opposed to the religion. And I talked about this on the radio too, is that if you have, say, like a Coca-Cola,
00:23:14
Speaker
And someone is in the desert and they're dying and they're trying to climb, you know, get towards water, a water source of some sort. If you give them the Coca-Cola, they're going to survive. But they're not surviving because of the Coca-Cola. If you pull out like the sugar and the syrup and the coloring and all that stuff, that's the religion. And what you're left over with is the water. And I'd say that is the humanism underlying everything.
00:23:35
Speaker
Do you think that obviously prior to getting smashed with cake, do you think your wife would have been open to dating an atheist or a secular person or was it like that you guys got along so well and then the religion came up and then she realized that you know you weren't you know of the same religion like do you think she would have been open to that prior or through dating you she started opening her mind a little bit more?
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because absolutely not. She would not have given me a second chance if she knew at the time that I wasn't religious and she's told me that. So it kind of helped me that I was going through the Masonic Lodge thing at the same time because it kind of opened my mind up to, okay, maybe there's something to this or, you know, I was just giving it a chance. And so, you know, when we met, I talked about doing that. I said, oh, you know, you have to say you believe in a higher power and all that type of thing.
00:24:28
Speaker
And she kind of just went along with it. It was kind of one of those things where she just assumed, and I just assumed, and our assumptions led to us being in a relationship without having that talk. And so I did leave the Masonic Lodge eventually. I didn't mention that, but I ended up asking for a demit from the Masonic Lodge. And they sent me a Bible verse, which was basically like, you were never a brother, we never knew you, and that type of thing, which is kind of funny now that you're looking back on it now. It was kind of funny.
00:24:59
Speaker
It's like masonry, that's cold. As we move on to this next section, the pajamas that your kids are wearing, do they come in adult sizes?
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure we could find you something, especially with the, you know, they don't have the feet on there, but we can get you one that's like a full one with the feet and the hood and all that stuff would be great. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Go ahead. Carry on my friend.
Raising Free Thinkers
00:25:20
Speaker
Cool. All right. So we'll get into the parenting side of things. Okay. So this is a quote that I really liked from Dale McGowan. So it just says, just remember education, which is providing leadership for your kids as they learn life skills is different from indoctrination, which is just pouring ideas into their heads without inviting critical examination.
00:25:37
Speaker
So the one thing that Dale McGowan learned from Dale McGowan is your kids can't be indoctrinated if they're given the opportunity to explore and learn and be curious. If you're telling your kids, this is the way things are because it's the way they are and this is the way I'm going to tell you, and I tell you this because I tell you this, you know, potentially they can be indoctrinated. But, you know, giving them the opportunity to see other worldviews and focus on the next slide I'm going to get into, but focusing on the different aspects of things will lead to
00:26:07
Speaker
you know, just education as opposed to indoctrination. Because a lot of things too, I would never want to indoctrinate my children to become atheist or humanist. I have the opportunity to, you know, build my own foundation and I want them to have that opportunity as well.
00:26:22
Speaker
So these are the best practices for raising free thinkers. So the first one is leaving them unlabeled. So you wouldn't call your child a Blue Jays child or, you know, a Maple Leafs child or, you know, a Boston, whatever their names, I don't know sports. So anyway, just you wouldn't you wouldn't do sports labels for kids, right? Or you wouldn't say like, this is a this is a
00:26:43
Speaker
a liberal child or this is an NDP child. So why would you call them an atheist child or a Christian child or a Muslim child, right? Just leave them unlabeled, makes things a lot easier for them. They don't have to live up to this label that you place on them. Encouraging religious literacy is a really, really important one because
00:27:02
Speaker
If you can inoculate your children to the ideas of religion before they're intercepted later on, that it works so well. My kids will see someone with a turban, and they'll say, what's that on his head? And I'll say, oh, that's a turban, and that person's a Sikh. And this is what they believe. And they go, oh, that's so cool.
00:27:21
Speaker
or they'll see someone with the hijab and then they'll ask questions about that. It gives me an opportunity to talk about the different religions. It gives them a brimstone-free introduction to the religions. If the kids start seeing these as similar stories but from different perspectives, it helps you relate them to myths and stories. Encouraging active moral development.
00:27:47
Speaker
Um, so, and that kind of goes along with, um, with another one encouraging empathy, but the active moral development is, you know, you don't just say this is the reason why, or you don't say like, um, you have to go to bed and this because I said so.
00:28:01
Speaker
I'll say, okay, it's time for bed. And the kids say, why? And I say, well, you know, if you don't get a good sleep tonight, then you're going to be really grumpy tomorrow. And if you're really grumpy tomorrow, then I'm going to be grumpy, you know, and they'll kind of learn that way. It's like, Oh, okay. No, I don't want dad to be grumpy. So I guess I better go to sleep so I can get some good sleep. So I'm not grumpy in the morning. And that's just a basic understanding for the kids.
00:28:21
Speaker
You know, as I get older, you can add a little bit more nuance to it. But just giving them the ability to think forward and think like, okay, well, this is the reason why it's not just because someone's saying so. Which also goes with another one as well. I'll tell you in a second. So making death natural and familiar.
00:28:39
Speaker
And this is something that we've experienced a couple times this past year. My mom's mom passed away, my Nana, like a year ago, just this past week. And it's been really rough for us as well. It's just been a really rough time. And the kids really love their Nana.
00:28:56
Speaker
and it's just been really, really difficult. They've never forgotten my Nana, even through the pandemic and everything. They would see her on FaceTime and then after the pandemic was over, they'd run to her, even though they were really young. So really big part of their life. And the same thing with their grandfather, my father-in-law. They just
00:29:14
Speaker
you know, had such a connection with him. So losing those people gave them the opportunity to see that life is not permanent. They don't, they don't, they're not just going to be here forever. And then when, you know, they asked my wife, well, you know, where's grandpa? She'll say, oh, he's in heaven and this and the other. And then they'll come to me and say, well, where's grandpa? And I say, well, you know, I don't think that he exists anymore, but he exists in our memories and our memories are all we have.
00:29:38
Speaker
So they had the opportunity to kind of ask on both sides, and then they can pick an answer that may be comfortable to them in the moment, but eventually the truth wins out, right? So eventually
00:29:50
Speaker
when it comes time for them to, you know, think about, you know, does it make sense or does it make sense that we just have the memories left? That's where they start to kind of lean in one direction. So encouraging general questioning of authority, which kind of goes along with what we were saying before, where if I say, you know, bedtime is going to be in five minutes, they can say, why? And I'll say, you know, because we need time to go and brush your teeth, we need time to go and read books and stuff like that. And they can say, well, you know, Dad, can I have five more minutes?
00:30:20
Speaker
And then I can consider, okay, you know, maybe, you know, how can we add five more minutes here? What can we do? I'm going to say, Oh, you know, I want to do this. So maybe we'll lose one book. Okay. That sounds good. You know, just so it's the same timing and it kind of gives them the ability to, to question authority, but not to the point where you're going to be making the rules. Cause the whole thing too, is that you don't want them to ever get to a point in their life where there's an authority figure that tells them they have to.
00:30:46
Speaker
This is going to be content warning, but pull your pants down. I don't want them to just go along with it and pull their pants down. I want them to question why. Why do I have to do that? Well, because I'm a doctor and I need to check this out or whatever, right? But there's going to be good reasons and bad reasons to do something and I want them to know, have the ability to question and guide their own life that way.
00:31:07
Speaker
Encouraging encouraging curiosity. Now, Dale McGowan, he always says that if he could impart anything on his kids, it would be curiosity because everything else kind of follows that the curiosity of kids to be able to learn about other people's cultures, learn about other people.
00:31:24
Speaker
We lose it along the way, you know, most of the time. And I would just love to be able to hold on to that and keep the kids curious and engaged in talking to people and asking questions and stuff like that. So we constantly ask them questions. If they ask me questions and I don't know the answer, I don't just lie to them. I tell them I don't know that. Maybe we can look it up or maybe there is no answer to that as of yet. Right. So that's the type of thing that keeps them going. And
00:31:51
Speaker
And I tell this to my kids, too, that people used to think that thunder and lightning was an angry god in the sky throwing lightning bolts and all that. And then I said, but this is what it really is. The lightning strikes and fries a trillion air molecules, and they separate, and then they crash back together. And that's the big long crash that you hear. It's like waves at a beach. And they think that's so much more interesting than a god with a cosmic tantrum.
00:32:19
Speaker
Encouraging empathy goes along with the other one there. So just, you know, anytime that they get in trouble, I'll say, well, do you know why you hurt their feelings? Or do you know why you got in trouble for this? You know, it's because you're hurting other people. How would you feel if someone did this to you? And that type of thing encourages that empathy. Because sympathy is feeling bad for somebody else, but empathy is actually feeling the pain yourself. And that's what we always want to encourage them to
00:32:43
Speaker
to take that on themselves and say, how would you feel in that situation? Teaching a gauge coexistence. So that's something that my wife and I do all the time. So we have different worldviews. We want to teach the kids that, you know, go and ask, you know, dad, do you believe in God? No, I don't. You know, this is the reason why I don't find any evidence for it. But you know what your mom does? So go talk to her if you want to talk to her about that. And then social, they'll go to talk to my wife and they'll say, you know, mom, do you believe in God? And she says, yes, I do. And she tells them, you know, why and and and
00:33:12
Speaker
you know, gives her background on that. And then she says, but you know, dad doesn't so go talk to him about it. So it's really cool. We share that engaged coexistence where the kids see both sides and they they're able to ask questions openly. And then the last one is normalizing disbelief.
00:33:26
Speaker
in belief as well. But normalizing disbelief is a thing that, you know, it's okay to not believe. And my son always says this all the time because my older one, he always questions his little brother will say something like, well, dad, I have magic powers. And his brother goes, I don't believe you. And he goes, well, I do. And he says, well, I don't believe you. And I'm okay. It's okay to not believe something.
00:33:45
Speaker
And I always encourage them, yeah, you're right, it's okay to not believe. If you're not convinced, obviously you're not gonna believe it. So if you look on the right-hand side here, so if you encourage kids to have their own feelings, thoughts, and questions, it's always the best. You don't always have to make up an answer for your kids. Sometimes it's good to say, I don't know, and then you can look things up together. And then there's also so many unknowns in this world, it makes sense to teach them it's okay not to know an answer. Because a lot of times in school too, if you don't know the answer, they say, well, you're wrong.
00:34:15
Speaker
Well, no, you may not be wrong. You just might not know the answer. So that's one thing that we always try and say. And my kids will point that out to their teachers if they say, you know, I don't know. And the teacher goes, okay, well, I'm going to move on to somebody else. And then my son will be like, well, it's not because I'm wrong. I just don't know the answer yet. Can you teach me what the answer is? And it just really shocks the teacher sometimes.
00:34:36
Speaker
So these are things that we tell our kids all the time. So we'll always love you no matter what you believe. And that's a really important message for them to know. Because we always say in the very bottom there, it says, you know, you can change your mind a million times if you want, and we'll love you no less if you choose something that's different than what we believe.
00:34:53
Speaker
And that's just really important for them to hear because if they're going to choose a religious identity at some point in the future, I know it's going to be something in line with our outlook on the world. It's going to be in line with the humanism that we have because that's basically how we're expressing things and how they're coming up. So whatever they choose to call themselves or label themselves later on, they're going to have that as a foundation.
00:35:19
Speaker
And then, you know, just those same things I said before, but I don't believe in God, but Mom does. So you can ask for what she thinks and vice versa. Another really good quote by Dale McGowan. What we truly want is the satisfaction of seeing our children become mature, self-reliant human beings at any age, thinking for themselves, free and happy.
Resources for Interfaith Relationships
00:35:34
Speaker
Parents who want anything else are obsessed with control and not free and happy themselves. And that's the bottom left picture right there. That's us helping at Street Help downtown, beating the homeless people there.
00:35:46
Speaker
So these are some resources for interfaith relationships. So in faith and in doubt, how religious believers and non-believers can create strong marriages and loving families by Dale McGowan. That's who I got a lot of my help and my ideas from. He's just such an amazing individual. When he came into the game, there had been nobody before him who
00:36:06
Speaker
tackled the interfaith marriages or even raising children. So sharing reality is another book by him, how to bring secularism and science to an evolving religious world. And that talks about how you can work with people of different faiths to get the big picture of what we want to see. And then how to have impossible conversations, a very practical guide by Dr. Peter Bogosian and James Lindsay. So that's street epistemology, using Socratic questions to
00:36:34
Speaker
have respectful conversations and dialogue. And these are resources for raising interfaith children. So Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale McGowan, Raising Freethinkers by Dale McGowan, which goes along with the podcast. His podcast is amazing. It has maybe 30 episodes that are about 12 minutes, 12 minutes each. And it really breaks down a lot of things, including like the Santa Claus myth, like should you do the Santa Claus myth or not? And his school of thought is that it's an ultimate dry run.
00:37:03
Speaker
for religion because if your kids get to the point where they disbelieve in it and they start asking questions and they start realizing that maybe something this fishy here, maybe the same kind of thing in a mirror image would happen for their religion as well.
00:37:21
Speaker
Um, another one here is, uh, called being both embracing key religions and one interfaith family by Susan Katz Miller. That one is a little bit more like people from different faith groups. So like a Christian and Muslim or, you know, a Jew and a Christian. Um, but if anyone's kind of in that situation as well, cause I know there's, there's secular Jews as well that like to keep their culture and celebrate things like Hanukkah. And it's like, you know, how can you celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas within the same thing? It's really funny. Cause my son learned about Hanukkah and Diwali and stuff at Christmas time.
00:37:52
Speaker
And he came home and he said, dad, I really want to celebrate Hanukkah next year. And I said, oh yeah, cool. Okay, we can do that. I said, what do we need to do? What do we need to get? He goes, well, the most important thing is you get one present for eight days. So each eight days you get one present.
00:38:06
Speaker
And then I said, okay. And then, so Cindy looks at me and she goes, well, you know why he wants to do this, right? And I said, no. She's like, he wants those presents plus the Christmas presents. So I'm like, Nathan, if you get the eight presents and you're not gonna be getting any presents under the Christmas tree, and he goes, oh, okay, well, maybe we can do Christmas again next year then.
00:38:26
Speaker
So that was pretty funny, but it's easy. He's a thinker. Um, and then a really good book that I've just found out recently about is relax. It's only God. How and why to talk to your kids about religion when you're non-religious, um, by, uh, Wendy Thomas Russell. So the cool premise behind this book is it was two non-religious parents that were not raising their kids to do anything to do with religion. They wanted, you know, nothing to do with it. It just never came up. And then all of a sudden their daughter came home from school and talking about God.
00:38:55
Speaker
and talking about how their family was going to be going to hell and that type of thing. And they were like, oh, I don't even know how to tackle this because this is just completely out of our wheelhouse. So she wrote a book for people who are in that situation where it's like never, it was never brought out.
00:39:08
Speaker
Um, so that's, that's a really fun one. I'm just currently reading it right now. So some of the things that are happening in that I see kind of emerged in my life, even though it's in a different situation, but yeah, really good one. Um, and then we got kids, uh, kids books for free thought. So L the humanist is a really good one that my son loves. And it talks about the platinum rule.
00:39:28
Speaker
Which to me, I think trumps all the other golden rules, but I'm a little bit biased. But it's basically treating people the way they want to be treated as opposed to the way that you want to be treated because everyone wants to be treated differently. And one of my favorite quotes from that book is, you know, my brother Bryson doesn't like to be tickled on his feet, but I like to be tickled on my feet. So I don't tickle Bryson on his feet, but I love when my mom tickles my feet.
00:39:52
Speaker
And that's just kind of a really cool way to see like, you know, people want to be treated differently. So treat other people the way they want to be treated. And it's funny cause both of my kids say that all the time. Now they're like, treat other people the way they want to be treated. You know, mom, dad, whatever they tell us that all the time. It's like, yeah, you're right. You're right. My name is stardust is written by L the humanist sister, which is really cool. Cause it talks about how everything is made of stardust and it talks about how the beginning of the universe and you know, the amazing, amazing stuff. Um,
00:40:19
Speaker
and you know goes through this is you know a dinosaur and this and this is made of stardust and this is you know it's really cool uh astrophysics astrophysics for kids in a hurry by neil degrasse tyson so my son right now is only six and this book is for eight year olds but he wanted this book really really badly
00:40:38
Speaker
Because he loves anything to do with space and cosmology and astrophysics and he's just like in love with Neil deGrasse Tyson. So now in May, we're going to see him in Detroit, me and my son. And it's cool because we're going to be going with my friends at Sunday Assembly Detroit.
00:40:54
Speaker
And if anyone doesn't know what Sunday assembly is, it's kind of like a church. But for non-religious people, they just do motivational speeches. I'm actually going to be doing a presentation similar to this on the 21st. It was supposed to be today, but it got postponed. And then so they just have a motivational speaker. They have food afterwards. And it's just like a lot of community and fellowship. And it's really cool group of people. They do cuisine and conversations on Friday nights or Saturday nights. And you go out and talk at a restaurant.
00:41:22
Speaker
Another book really good one is I wonder by Annika Harris and that's Sam Harris's wife and that's a good kid's book talks about you know I wonder why the sky is this color I wonder why the stars I wonder why this and by the end of the book you realize there's no answers to it it's just fun to wonder. And then a really good one for encouraging the religious diversity is in the beginning creation myths from around the world.
00:41:47
Speaker
And this has a bunch of different creation myths and it's all about the beginning of man or the beginning of humankind from different perspectives. So there's like the indigenous cultures and what they think, and then it has like Christianity, it has like a whole bunch of different backgrounds, but the Christian one is thrown in there too, just as in the mix. So you can kind of see how they all relate and they can see like, oh, okay, well like the Jesus, you know, well the Adam and Eve thing is just like all these other myths throughout history.
00:42:16
Speaker
So some final thoughts. I just want to say that it's OK to make mistakes. And this may not work for everybody. There are some people that are in relationships with people who their religion dominates their life. And it's very important to them. And maybe you come out as non-religious, and it doesn't work out. And they want a divorce or something. So it's not like one person's situation may be completely different from somebody else.
00:42:44
Speaker
I'm just trying to give you some resources that if you find yourself in this situation, you can turn it around. There can be times where you use street epistemology where you could instead yell at someone for believing something that you think is stupid. Because we did go through a period where I was like, you're so smart in other things. Why can't you be so stupid here? How can you be so stupid here? And that was like the absolute wrong thing to say. And mistakes were made big time.
00:43:13
Speaker
But when I started to learn that you should respect the person and find out what it is they believe and why, it gives you the opportunity to change things around and have that respectful dialogue. So it's okay to make mistakes and it may not work for everybody. And that is pretty much it. So if anyone has any more questions.
00:43:37
Speaker
I love that bit that it's not about questioning their beliefs. It's how can your beliefs and their beliefs work together so you can move on? Right. If you can ask them what the important things are when it comes to what they want to see out of things or what they want to get from their worldview, and then just compare them to yours as well.
00:44:03
Speaker
Nice. Oh, I believe we have a hand up for me. Martin Frith. Oh, I've never heard of him before. Who is that? Who is that guy? Thanks for a great presentation, Steve. And I was just thinking, are we going to be able to get a list of those resources that you put up? Yeah, absolutely. I can send you an email with all those or send them to Betty Ann. Yeah. OK, fantastic. Because I think they would be great to put up on our website.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, listen, thank you so much for such a rich presentation and sharing your life so openly with us. Thanks, Martin. That's awesome. Are you open to adopting anybody?
00:44:53
Speaker
Well, it's funny because I'm going to be going on a cruise for my 10 year, my 10 year anniversary is this year. And my kids were taking our kids on a cruise and I was on the radio and I told them that and they're like, Oh, can we come? Can we be your kids? Can we adopt this?
00:45:08
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, I can adopt other people, I guess. OK. Once you hit two, you just might as well not stop. Well, exactly. Yeah. OK. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks. And it comes with great PJs. So. Yeah. And you probably can't see the one where they're shirtless there, but they have mom's spaghetti tattoos because I went to mom's spaghetti M&M's restaurant in Detroit and I got them some tattoos that has a little heart that says mom and there's a fork through it.
00:45:37
Speaker
I mean, they want to be as cool as dad with his tattoos. Yeah. Well, I've got the Humanist Canada tattoo that you I don't know if you can see it here. And I just got like a happy humanist on the side. So I told you where to put it.
00:45:53
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's right. So my son, Nathan, he, well, first of all, he is so funny. And Martin, you're going to get a kick out of this. So at school, they were talking about making donations. And they said, you know, if you were to find a place to make donations, where would you put your donations? And my son said, I wanted all my coins to go to Humanist Canada because they're doing amazing things. And he's six years old. So that was kind of funny.
00:46:15
Speaker
Um, but no, my son, he's always like, um, I'm asking him, where do you want me to this tattoo or where do you want this to be done? He's like, I want the one on both your arms because it needs to be symmetrical. And he's like, and I, and you need the humanist Canada, uh, symbol on this side and you need just a happy human on the other side. So it's funny. I mean, not wrong. Yeah. So I permanently put it on my skin where he told me to. Um, if I, I can kickstart, uh, some, uh, some questions of this of how do you handle
00:46:45
Speaker
the belief versus scientific facts issue. I know that can be a delicate one as for example you said beginning of the universe. How do you handle with science says this, people believe this, or how do you delicately dance with that?
00:47:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. And the cool thing is, is that Cindy is a pharmacist, so she has a science background. So, you know, she understands evolution. She may think it got started a different way than I do. But basically, if the kids and the kids talk about this all the time, because they ask, oh, you know, how did whales become like, how did we like where whales come from? And then I say, well, you know, they actually think that they started on land. And you can see that in the
00:47:32
Speaker
vestigial organs that they have, they have like hip bones and things like that. And I'm like trying to find a video online and it shows like this creature that started off as, you know, a land creature and slowly over time. And I'm like, oh, look at, you know, 247 million years ago, this is what it looked like. And then 246 million years ago, and then just kept going down this path. And they're just like, wow, this is so amazing. And the cool thing is, is that they hear a story about
00:47:56
Speaker
like a religious story or something and they go, okay, whatever. And then they hear a real life story about how evolution happens over time. And they're like, wow, you know, it's blown away by it. So, and that's one thing that, you know, kids should always hear is their parents saying, wow, because it just kind of enforces that that curiosity can continue on beyond childhood as well. I saw Kerris had a question. I'm calling. Kerris always has a question.
00:48:24
Speaker
Yeah, this is totally unrelated, but I have never seen this done where you are superimposed over this shared video, like over the shared screen. Is that Jared's expertise or how did that happen? That was a fluke. So Betty and I were in here trying to figure out things beforehand and I'm like, oh, I can't get this to work and all that. And all of a sudden I clicked this button and I was superimposed on the thing. And I'm like, well, I guess this is me now. I guess superimposed in the background.
00:48:51
Speaker
It was brilliant. See, that's well, that's his facts. It's my belief that my appearance in this Zoom video made it possible. Yeah. So, you know, just teach controversy, really. Thanks, Peter. But it's OK for us not to believe. It's totally fine. It's a moral story. Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
Um, I, I guess this is kind of like a more, a deeper question of is the religion versus non-religion in even an issue for your kids or is it more of an issue for your parents and the family and everybody else? Cause my understanding the kids is more concerned with are there chicken nuggets in cartoons rather than is this, you know, the, you know, the belief system of the world. Um, it does, I mean, how do they, how do the kids view religion now that they've been, you know, they're getting a smattering of all kinds.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. And it's cool because they don't even really notice it. This is just life for them, right? They have two parents that are in different backgrounds, different worldviews, and it just isn't an issue for them. In the book, Raising Freethinkers, Dale McGowan ends up talking to some children and saying to them, you know, like, how does it feel to be in a family with mixed faith parents or mixed worldview parents? And they said, I don't think it feels any different than being in a family that has a shared view
00:50:12
Speaker
shared faith value. So it's just cool that you can see it from the kid's perspective. They just love their parents regardless of what they believe in. That's the importance of normalizing disbelief as well as normalizing the belief.
00:50:26
Speaker
That's very nice. It's very I mean, they're just they're just taught to be more practical with things more objective to things rather Yeah, and that's the thing too. My son's always looking for evidence So it's like if you if you tell him something he goes well, where's your evidence? You know, so he he's good that one. Do they ever question mom's beliefs?
00:50:43
Speaker
um yes they do and it's kind of funny but also i'm so proud of her and the way she handles things because they'll say to her like i don't want to go to church because i don't believe in god and she goes oh that's okay i'm gonna love you no matter what or like i'll believe i love you no matter what you believe um and i'm trying to think of one thing happened at our um
00:51:05
Speaker
at the table the one time, and I can't remember what it was, but basically they brought it up to their grandmother in two and just saying like, you know, like, where did God come from? I think they said, God was made by another God. And I was so proud of them because I was so proud of my wife and her mother because they both said, well, then who made that God? And who made that God? And who made that God? And they kind of went down like the turtles all the way down thing. And I just thought that was kind of neat for them to just
00:51:33
Speaker
you know, do that instead of saying like, no, no, this is the way it is and correct them, right? Because it allowed them to feel proud, like the kids to feel proud that, okay, I've come up with these really cool questions and they are cool questions, right? And that's the one thing we always want to encourage them. Like, if you're going to ask a question, I don't want you to feel shame for asking that question. It's a really good question regardless of what it is. And there may be an answer, there may not be an answer. And I may know the answer and I may not know the answer, so.
00:52:03
Speaker
Sometimes it's easy to just dump a history lesson or sometimes it's like, yeah, let's just keep this short and sweet because they're not asking a deep question. They're just asking kind of a quick answer question and then they run off and go play.
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And that's part of the development of their mind, too, is coming up with really cool questions, and then they'll go and think about it, and then they'll revise their questions and their answers. Another example from the book Raising Freethinkers, his youngest daughter came up to him and said, Dad, I finally understand the God and Jesus thing. God makes all the things for adults, so like the deep end of the pool, and Jesus makes all the things for kids, like the shallow end of the pool.
00:52:43
Speaker
So instead of saying to them, no, no, that's not the way it works. They're all make believe. He says to them, he said to her, oh, so God for me and Jesus for you then, right? And she went, yeah, I guess so. She's like, I'm still thinking about it. And then that was, you know, later on, she revised it and said like, God, I made all the bad things and Jesus made all the good things and then revised it again. And that's just the thing. You're giving them the opportunity. If you stop their questioning and just say like, no, no, this is the real reason, or this is the, you know,
00:53:08
Speaker
They're all made up stories or something like that. It's just going to stop that curiosity and it's going to stop their development. They're just not going to bother thinking about it anymore because they have the answers. Sounds just a very open, objective, happy home you seem to have fostered. I hope so. Also, I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you, Mom, for everything you're doing in this relationship too. Thank you.
00:53:37
Speaker
So for whoever just joined late, Anita is my mom and she's one that accidentally raised me as a free thinker. So you can thank her. Yeah. There was nothing back then, right? Does anybody else have any questions? Anything you want to bring up? Me? Anybody. Oh, okay. It's like, hmm.
00:54:01
Speaker
Now, I'm very proud of him. I'm very proud of the family. They're doing great. Thanks. Fantastic to hear. Well, we want to thank you very much, Steve. I guess as we can wrap up this presentation, thank you for the presentation. Thank you for bringing your family to us and seeing what works, what doesn't work. Kind of give you more some ideas rather than some, as you teach, rather than hard structure, it just leaves you open to question and open to understanding and empathy. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, for sure.
00:54:29
Speaker
Thanks so much. I hope this is helpful to other people as well if it's recorded and then put up on the newsletter and the website. People can maybe stumble across it and get something out of it. I will share the resources with Betty Ann to be able to share those as well as part of this. And yeah, I'm not telling anyone how to do things and what was going to work perfectly for them, but just sharing what's worked for me and hopefully that can help others.
00:54:57
Speaker
Thank you for listening to The Voice of Canadian Humanism. We would like to especially thank our members and donors who make our work possible. If you feel that this is the type of programming that belongs in the public conversation, please visit us at HumanistCanada.ca and become a member and or donate. You can also like and subscribe to us on social media at Humanist Canada. We'll see you next time.