Normally, I would say that developing higher reasoning skills is a good thing. Who'd of thought it could get you sent to hell. From Rachel Aviv's desturbing piece in the August 2009 Harper's on the evangelizing of nine-year-olds (sub. req.):
According to the Fellowship, once children begin to understand the difference between right and wrong--somewhere between the ages of five and twelve--they are cognitively capable of salvation, and, crucially at risk for eternal damnation.
Why is this all disturbing?
The older children in particular warmed to the message that there was something deeply , irrevocably wrong with them. (The Fellowship heartily reinforces the doctrine or original sin.) The missionaries nudged children toward self-consciousness yet presented an archaic view of what it means to have a self.
And it gets weirder.
In the past half-century, the born-again child has been emblazoned as an ideal believer, a mascot for anti-intellectualism .... In the ... top ten list of "Satan's Attacks on the Child," number three, after drugs and sex, is "humanism," man's capacity for fulfillment through the mind.
I remember when I was writing an article for Wilder Voice several years ago, I did an interview with a liberal minister (and Obie grad), Jim Gertmanian, who told me something to the effect of that "we must be careful to distinguish between those who think simply because they haven't asked the questions, and those who think simply because they have asked and found satisfactory answers." I take this to mean that we shouldn't dismiss Evangelical (in the cultural sense) Christianity for being fraught with simple world-view simply because it's a simple world-view. We should only be worried if its proponents take that view because they don't bother thinking through the repercussions and ramifications of that view.
I'm willing to accept that many Evangelical Christians have thought through these things and formed their beliefs using strong and rational mental processes. I'm not willing to accept that these kids have.
And, while I know that these people think that they're doing good, it simply isn't the case that children have the cognitive processes in place to do the sorts of advanced reasoning required to come to rational conclusions on matters of God.
But maybe I'm begging the question against these Evangelicals. After all, it seems that--for those who would tell nine-year-olds that they're going to hell--doing abstract reasoning isn't a good thing.
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