Is taking children to church a form of child abuse?

[Carl-Richard]

10 hours ago, Monster Energy said:

In my opinion, yes, school is abuse.

Then I think we might be watering down the concept as you've said. Is teaching your kids to not break the law abuse?

 

11 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

You could even reverse uno this - NOT educating your children could be seen as neglective abuse. An adult has a responsibility to prepare the child for life in society; instilling in them the knowledge, skills and habits to thrive. 

Abuse can be what we do, and what we do not.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't! 

Sadhguru did not put his child in school before 12 years old, specifically to avoid indoctrinating her (he even told people not to teach her anything vaguely school-related when interacting with her). But he made her travel with him all across the country. She did not have a say in that. And of course that affected her beliefs a certain way than if she had "decided" not to travel with him.

At some point, treating school or church as a concrete thing or place you can choose to go to or not is a bit simpleminded and reductionistic. The very environment you are born into is technically a place you can choose whether to be in or not, and it affects your beliefs just the same. The only strong difference is that school and church has an organized and strong agenda behind it, people having an intention to teach something to somebody. But this intention exists in micro-versions as Sadhguru was aware of in daily interactions with people, and even without any intention to teach or even the active intention to prevent teaching from happening, you are passively being molded by your surroundings, happenings and events in a just as significant if not a more significant way.

Bringing up a child has an element of coercion if you want them to live successfully inside a state (a place with a government) or simply a community with behavioral expectations. They have to conform to either laws or norms or both, or else they will be punished. And of course if all of this is abuse, then what is letting them "choose" to be independent of these things, letting them go live in the jungle alone (let's assume a kid, a very young kid, just keeps wandering into the jungle any time you let them out of sight)? Maybe laws and norms can protect children from neglect, as you've alluded to, a form of abuse.

So can abuse maybe depend on other things than coercion, influences of beliefs, and teaching, and perhaps social responsibility, expectations, duty? Can coercion be a social expectation, a duty, and can it even be morally good?

Edited 11 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

School is not abuse. But it is conformist. But some degree of conformity cannot be avoided. Kids cannot help going through a conformist stage.

Edited 5 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Inliytened1]

On 5/3/2026 at 5:21 AM, Monster Energy said:

Serious question.

Kids don’t choose it. They don’t understand it. They can’t question it. But they’re still brought into a belief system before they even have the ability to think for themselves.

If this was any other kind of belief, people would probably have a problem with it. But when it’s religion, it gets called tradition or how you raise your kids.

So where’s the line?

Is it guidance

or shaping someone’s worldview before they’ve had a real choice?

Not saying religion is right or wrong.

Just asking

If a kid can’t say no is it really a choice?

 

They can take you there but whether you choose to believe it is up to you.  My parents were conservative Jews so I don't feel like I was ever brainwashed or forced to believe something.  But then again when it came to.God I just thought for myself always.  Which is weird because I didn’t always do that in other areas of my life.  But I can see where in more orthodox or religious families there can be forms of brainwashing and cult like behavior.  So I think it depends.

Edited 4 hours ago by Inliytened1

[Natasha Tori Maru]

11 hours ago, integral said:

I deeply questioned everything that was happening from day one and thought the whole thing was wrong and deception, I told the teacher when I was 6 that she's just repeating whatever she was told. This of course got me into huge trouble and it was a huge problem with the teacher lol. This was between the ages of 4-10.

So I think resistance to Conformity in my case was genetic. 

Holy shit, maybe it's an INTJ type trait ? I think you are INTJ, if I am not mistaken.

I resisted all parts of schooling constantly 'I won't do this unless I see why, or where I can apply it'. I paid no attention and disregarded a lot of subjects for this reason.

My grades were atrocious. Until one day my Dad sat down with me and gave me the hard words. That even though I didn't see a use for what I was being taught, later on in life much of it would apply, I was just too ignorant and young to understand this. I needed to trust him, he said. 

My Dad is an engineer and construction manager. He taught me all about electrical work and low voltage DC circuits when younger (I learned PC building and software form him). I listened to him, because he knew his shit. He had applied knowledge I could see manifest in reality in concrete, tangible ways. He and my Grandfather were the only two family members I would listen to. 

At around 14 years old I decided I better learn this shit. Skipped a grade and was throttled into accelerated specialist, methods and general maths. Completed high school level maths in year 10. So I had only half load for my final 2 years prior to graduation. 

All my teachers, prior to applying myself, were trying to hold me back and concerned I had retarded development.

I was just an arrogant, pig headed INTJ who thought I was being forced into rubbish schooling that had no application 🤣🤣🤣

But it's a good case for minors needing guidance from parents. Neglect can be it's own abuse.

@Carl-Richard great insights and foods for contemplation 🥰

Edited 3 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Monster Energy]

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Then I think we might be watering down the concept as you've said. Is teaching your kids to not break the law abuse?

It’s not abuse because a healthy society needs rules. School is abuse because it limits consciousness with false claims and teaches obedience instead of questioning. It’s not healthy. The fixed schedules for when to wake up and when to stop aren’t natural, and the system isn’t adapted to human needs.

 

[Monster Energy]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

School is not abuse. But it is conformist. But some degree of conformity cannot be avoided. Kids cannot help going through a conformist stage.

Too much conformity becomes harmful, and that’s exactly what school often turns into. There are more downsides than benefits. You’re right that everyone goes through a conformist phase, but school is far too restrictive to give students any real room to breathe. It creates more stress than freedom.

 

[Monster Energy]

1 hour ago, Inliytened1 said:

They can take you there but whether you choose to believe it is up to you.  My parents were conservative Jews so I don't feel like I was ever brainwashed or forced to believe something.  But then again when it came to.God I just thought for myself always.  Which is weird because I didn’t always do that in other areas of my life.  But I can see where in more orthodox or religious families there can be forms of brainwashing and cult like behavior.  So I think it depends.

You may not have felt brainwashed, but it’s possible you were influenced unconsciously by words or ideas from your parents that you didn’t fully understand. That’s a real possibility. But I’m glad you didn’t feel confused and were able to ask the difficult questions about God and the church.

[oOo]

 

Is taking one children to the shopping mall, cinemas and giving them the latest iPhone to play the latest pop music abuse?

I think so.

I have been invited to many religious meetups in the past.

All of mine, were extremely wholesome experieces. 

The constant vomiting on religion people do only causes nervous system damage to every layer of the context in which the vomiting applies.

It's a lack of wisdom. People here talk about religion like they do the idea that theyre just people living in caves still. They dont deeply understand any of the texts. They dont know anyone genuinely intelligent thats religious and that theyre friends with, and yet they act like a teenager yelling at a celebrity gossip youtube video despite being completely oblivious to the corruption involved on both presentation and representation of that in the mind.

Religion is not a barricade to truth, nor is it a gatekeeper, its an entrance hallway that you can navigate anywhere from.

This is the fundamenta mistake of people that believe they are above religion, despite not knowing anything below it, and the connections they can make through it.

The fundamental mistake people make inside religion is that many do tend to view it as a gatekeeper, but not always. You would be surprised by how many intelligent people youd meet.

I have been to Catholic Churches, Latter-Day saints, Islam both Sunni and Shia excursiona, Jewish synagogues, Buddhist temples and many more.

Not because I am more affiliated with one more over the other in the spiritual sense, but because I view each as a gateway to understanding the human experience deeper while understanding the place of worship that is created, was done so specifically for the purpose of honouring prayer as a sacred experience.

And I have done this around the world and will continue to do when I am invited to do so as a matter of respect, and expanding of my own horizons for that niche experiential understanding.

Does it mean I am not "god realised" because I try to appreciate and deepn my understanding of the human experience by doing these things? Let me point back to that youtube remark I made.

This forum needs to mature, as much as we also need to maintain a sense of humour on the right things.

And look I get it, many of you are Americans as well, and Americans as the world knows are extremes on both ends of the spectrum in nearly everything, in both stupidity and intelligence, humility and arrogance, wealth and poverity, etc, which makes parsing these things as far more difficult, that you just want to lock yourself away from the world, carve philosophically to the bone and spray insect repellent daily as a form of self-protection.

For that, you have my empathy, and my sincere condolences that despite the much respect I have for America's history, its present position presently reflects no ones heart's deepest wishes locally or globally, and certainly not concerning peace deals around "spiritual faith", "social" and "cultural/culture".

Australia has its own issues here, but I still totally empathise with the chasm that still exists between the countries concerning along with all the other ideological and general identity issues America is faced with.

That said... I get that "Maturity" on this issue through above appeasement can feel like competing against a landlock on personal experience. However this shouldn't be able personal experience only, which emotions easily taint, objectivity requires that we take actions based on the thing in itself both inside and outside its environmental context. That is measurement that becomes spiritual movement one can still make on the sidelines whether one chooses to go to a church, Ashram to expand their horizons or not. Because tonality shifts with recontextualisation, and one upgrades from being only a human that was abused by modern culture, which today includes just youtube in general, and forming reactive generalisations accordingly, to someone with a little more discernment and leadership, with a "take it or leave it" approach that is adaptively not reactively formed. And because of this, views other peoples progression concerning, not through the one dimensionality of the "like or dislike" button they've been algorithmically reorganised their percsption of other humans choices via, but through a gradient ascent/discent they can sometimes add wisdom to, while always coming being able to approach more adaptively and groundedly. And yes, the like/dislike button as simple as it seems, just like every other technology has influenced human relationships, has dramatically interfered with peoples growth in contextualising another human with more artistic colour, to more and more, through a black and white room in which colour was only ever a fiction, relative to the very identity issues that America now finds itself challenged with.

I rest my case. 

For people struggling concerning, its a lack of healthy integration and respect for stage blue and stage purple in spiral dynamics. And that makes sense, because from at least one perspective, modern western culture has a forced sense of betrayal attached to its very low buying price because it promises the world. A sense that American people feel they have been betrayed is one of the most obvious things to pick up about American culture, even beneath self-congratulatory MAGA, because it comes across as desperate, which only feeds the cycle of America's cultural abuse on its citizenry, abusing sovereignty at the core while pretending to honour it.  Thats deep seeded, and cannot be resolved with one comment on a forum about it.

Anyhow, let's finish with a laugh 😎

Sincerely, whoever you are, no matter your religion, best wishes and remember that you are loved ❤️ 

Edited 2 hours ago by oOo

[JoshB]

It absolutely is abuse. My mom would force us to go to church and scold and guilt us when we wouldn't. Most children's minds are just going to conform to whats being taught in church without any proper epistemic framework. Not everyone would of have been like me questioning the ten commandments and moral relativism in the Bible at grade school age.

To really understand how this is abuse you truly have to understand the metaphysical and epistmological positions that Christianity takes on and how it is devilry as a smoke screen. 

Taking your child to church for them learn devilry disguised as Truth 

Edited 1 hour ago by JoshB