Forcing children to attend Church

My students complain about being forced to go to Church. They see themselves as Christian merely by the accident of birth: "I'm only a Christian because I was born to Christian parents. If I had been born elsewhere, I would believe something else."

For them, those who preach and teach the gospel are "forcing religion down our throats." Keeping the Sunday obligation or the other precepts of the Church appears to them to be a form of bullying.

I never felt this myself. The feelings of my students are hard for me to understand. I think they are evidence that our children have been evangelized by the world. They seem to have adopted the belief that the first commandment is, "Make up your own mind."

I can't answer their objection until I have a sympathetic view of their problem. I have to enter their point of view in order to communicate with them and, I hope, help them see that knowledge of the truth is good news, not a violation of human freedom.

Is this what they think? "The Church should have no opinion about who Jesus is. Whatever anybody says about Jesus is true for them. If they think He is God, great. If they think He is a man, great. You think what you want, and I'll think what I want. Leave me alone!"