Adolescents and Religious Belief

Some time ago, a friend asked me to recommend a few books that might reconcile his adolescent child—who, thanks to studying in Iran’s educational system, was drifting away from religion—with it once again. I had no ready answer to this important question, except to suggest that he not make any direct attempt to promote religion and that, in introducing it to his child, he should steer completely clear of religious books. I think the decades-long experience of direct religious propagation in Iran has called the success of this approach into question. In fact, the ideology ruling Iran has created a polarized atmosphere that places the young person at an undesirable crossroads: they must either accept the ideological religion presented by official institutions or abandon religion altogether. The third option—that is, freely understanding and choosing true religion as a guide for moving toward a life of faith—has been marginalized and placed out of reach for many adolescents.

Parents naturally cannot entirely prevent their child from being present in the aforementioned polarized atmosphere, as this polarization has almost completely occupied the cultural sphere of society. At the same time, the direct promotion of religion—even if it differs from the ruling ideological narratives—can incline the newly blossoming mind of an adolescent toward one of those very poles, because they do not yet have the necessary readiness to shape their own third option. So, if parents wish to distance their adolescent child to some extent from today’s polarized atmosphere, what options do they have?

Probably the best method is an indirect approach to religion and the introduction of categories that can lay the groundwork for a religious outlook; that is, they provide the adolescent with the possibility, should they wish, to shape their own unique, non-imitative religious view of life and the world. Naturally, there is no universally agreeable list of the nature and quality of these categories, but I think acquainting a young person with the fundamental conditions governing the world—such as poverty, illness, death, suffering, ignorance, injustice, war, corruption, and oppression—while simultaneously displaying the spirit of vitality, hopefulness, perseverance, benevolence, integrity, forgiveness, inquisitiveness, and other colorful, transcendent-seeking manifestations of humanity is probably never a bad thing. This process of familiarization can occur within the everyday context of family experience, but this is not always practical, especially for today’s affluent adolescents who have no understanding of humanizing phenomena like deprivation and limitation and do not experience them in a meaningful way. Therefore, the importance of literature and extensive reading is doubly significant for such adolescents.

If I refer to my own personal experience, the most influential books I read during adolescence, which in a way made it possible for a religious attitude to take shape within me, had little apparent connection to religion and were perhaps created by irreligious authors. My goal in reading these books was not to become interested in religion, and I do not think anyone introduced them to me with the aim of reconciling me with religion. My acquaintance with these books was, of course, a result of the environment in which I grew up, but more importantly, a general interest in reading, curiosity, playfulness, and the spontaneous choice of the next book—without having a specific goal in reading it—made me intimate with them. Today, looking back at that era after several decades, I have no doubt that works such as The Bear Who Wanted to Be a Bear (Jörg Steiner), “Hasanak, Where Are You?” (Mohammad Parnian), the Good Stories for Good Children series (Mehdi Azar Yazdi), the stories of Abshuran (Ali Ashraf Darvishian), the collected works of Samad Behrangi, the Majid’s Stories series (Houshang Moradi Kermani), Nobody’s Boy (Hector Malot), and later novels such as Les Misérables (Victor Hugo), The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), Crime and Punishment and other works by Dostoevsky had a tremendous impact on me and opened horizons in my mind that prepared the ground for religious questions and choices.

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Published on the site notes.feizonline - July 27, 2018

Author: Rouzbeh Feiz

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