Please help, I need advice. My 4 year old son has been asking increasingly more questions about death and dying, but more concerning and heartbreaking is the fact that he believes that God will send him to the devil if he doesn't behave! We are a religious family, but I have never discussed the devil or death with him and this is not the image I want to create in his mind of what God is all about! How do I deal with it, I think it's giving him nightmares? He's been telling his teachers at school that "God knows" when he's being naughty. He's not attending a Christian school and his teacher confirmed that no discussions ever take place regarding religion because they cater for all religions in his school. My father-in law, who stays on our property is nearly obsessively religious and I think he might have put all these disturbing thoughts in his mind about going to the devil (which I assure you, will be addressed very seriously). But how do I deal with his? I urgently need advice, please.

Isn't that the church's point? Sin and go to hell. Repent, accept Christ and don't go to hell. Obedience through fear.

Maybe if you hadn't fed him the God/Devil fairy tale to start with you wouldn't have this problem....

Through an open, honest conversation with your son should definitely ask him to reveal the source of these horror stories he has been fed. Children do not come up with this stuff on their own. If this person told them not to tell anybody, that is even more serious and is effectively child abuse and shows that the person who told him these stories firstly knew it was wrong and secondly, has a malicious agenda.

If you do not intervene ASAP, the person who is feeding him these stories will continue to do so. Even if it is your father in law, it needs to be addressed. If not, it will simply get worse and worse. Your son stands a chance to become neurotic before you know it.

As the parent of your son, it is your responsibility to get to the bottom of this. Damn the delicate sensibilities of the zealot who is wilfully corrupting your son's mind and intentionally scarring his psyche. Treading on eggshells around the abuser is your choice, but this is a choice which the abuser will perceive as validation of his/her actions. Soon, your son may look upon your inaction as agreement with the abuser and this will undoubtedly affect your relationship as well.

If the source is the father in law, discuss it with your spouse. I understand your spouse may become defensive, but if you are able to maintain a rational discussion with your spouse about it, you can come up with a way to confront the father in law about the problem.

If it is a teacher or creche employee / day-mother etc, they should be confronted at a meeting with yourself and your spouse.

This is no different to somebody telling your son bedtime stories about a mind-reading blood-thirsty werewolf which lives in his closet, or an evil child-eating monster which lives under his bed.

Good luck.

Hi

God is good, and God has said that we must tell our children about him. My son Is 4 and a half and he knows that God loves him, but also knows that he must be good to and for God. He sings along gospel songs, and i think that pleases God to see children know him and sing to Him.

God wants us to tell our kids about Him, they must be tothe the right way to God.

You are never to Young to know Gods Love........

Ah yes... God the loving almighty. SO almighty that he couldn't simply forgive the people he SO LOVED, no - he had to have his son born a mortal and be put to death. Something seriously wrong with the portrayal of GOD by the Christian bible.

My son went through a very worried stage at about 6, asking a lot of questions about God and heaven and hell and life after death. I think they are just becoming aware of such things and so will ask and you should answer them as simply and factually as you can, within your religious beliefs. As they grow older and understand the coplexities of life, it gets better. Also try sending him to a loving Kids' Church or Sunday School.
I also think you could explain to him about God's immeasurable love by using a human example. Say "you know that Mommy loves you very much and would do anything to protect you, guide you and help you. You don't ever have to earn my love - you already have it unconditionally from the moment you were born. But knowing how much I love you, you would not want to go and do terrible things because you know I would be hurt and disappointed. You will choose to behave a certain way because I love you and you love me. If you decided that you didn't want to be my child and ran away from me, I would be very sad and you would be out of my sight. So it is the same with God but with a much deeper love than I can ever love you. And as long as you don't choose to turn your back on God and run away from him, you never need to worry. Just live your life knowing how deeply he loves you."
Hope that helps.

@ Piet - you effectively state that when you were young you were afraid the devil was out to get you, this fear was then resolved by attending counselling but in your twenties you found out it was true after all - that the devil is actually out to get you and ruin your life.

You then go on to advise SuziQ to seek out the source of these 'lies' - yet you effectively declared the child's fear of the devil to be validated by your discoveries at church camp. That would mean you actually think they are not 'lies' after all, would it not?

Which child would not be scared of an unseen force which was out to personally ruin his every chance at achieving happiness? I truly feel your couselling did not totally resolve the irrational fears you had, and somebody in authority at the church camp exploited these residual fears.

How in fact did you make this 'discovery' at church camp? Or was it less of a discovery and more like somebody in authority telling you it was so?

So Piet, do you feel that the child's beliefs about the devil are truths he has simply been prematurely introduced to, or do you feel the child's beliefs about the devil are in fact lies?

You appear to contradict yourself in your post and I feel this may confuse the person who is seeking advice?

@Epicurius

Sorry if my comments are confusing.

I merely compared my own awareness of God and the devil at such a young age with Suzi’s child. I’m not saying that the lies her child believe are actaully true. Not at all. It’s not true, like I said in the rest of my comments about a loving God.

So I’m not contradicting myself.

the lies that her child have been told are not the same as my fears. My fears were real, but I never understood why I’m so afraid, untill that camp. Before the camp I would wake up at night and actually see and feel stuff in my room. I mentioned it at the camp and they explained why it was happening. Then everything made sense.

I really truly believe your perception of the church is wrong. No-ne exploited my in any way. I’m not even attending that church anymore, but they still give counseling and advise without receiving anything back from me. What is there to exploit then?

I really do believe that the fears SuziQ’s son have are lies. After that camp I started a relationship with God, and the God I know from the bible, and from my relationship with Him, is not someone who will simply throw you in hell if you sin. If that is what you believe, then you misread the bible.

The entire bible states a loving God who will do anything for his children. And any qoutes I might receive of a tyrant who kills thousands of people(in the old testament) are simply misunderstood and taken out of context. I have also read these versus but understand them differently. Each of us will make a decision with regards to our religion. Some will reject it and others will accept it. To those who reject it, we seem foolish, and the truth is that we can’t explain or proof any of it, but we know that it’s true.

@Unskinny Bob – God is not only a loving God, but also a fair judge. In order to be fair, SIN MUST be punnished. Can a judge be fair if he let’s criminals go? But God punnishes sin, instead of sending us all to hell, He punnished His Son for our sins.

@ spikytiger2001 - No disrespect intended. From SuziQ's utter failure to see past the fallacies in Piet's post, I am convinced she suffers the same aflliction as her sone and is helping perpetuate it by maintaining a religious frame of reference to explain his fears, when this is the root of the child's problem. Piet hit all the right key words and phrases and SuziQ was sold, despite the blatant contradictions in his post.

@ Piet - You clearly DO contradict yourself. In your initial post, you wrote that you once had the same fears as the child ie obsession with and fear of the devil. You then said you received therapy for this and also reassured SuziQ her child's fears were only the result of lies - hence you imply his fears are unfounded. You then go on to say that despite the therapy, your fears of the devil remained and manifested in the form of dreams. You then state that at church camp you discovered that YOUR fears were in fact real and the devil really IS out to undermine our every effort at achieving happiness. This is where you are either saying your fears are real and the child's aren't real OR you are saying both your fears are real and the child merely discovered the scary truth about the devil's malicious intentions too soon in his life.....which is it Piet?

THEN, in your follow up post, you answer my question in that you indicate that YOUR fears are real and the childs are unfounded and simply the product of lies he has been told. Yet, you offer no reason to lead us to believe that you don't think there is a real devil whose every waking moment (that is every moment, because he probably doesn't sleep) is spent plotting our downfall. So we still don't really know where you stand on this issue. What makes your fears more real than the child's? Your personal perception. That is all. There are many less mysterious and less fantasy-based explanations for the tangible perception and fear of an evil presence which you experienced, yet you seem to choose the one which is most outrageous.

The truth is Piet, the child's fears are just as real to him and that is what matters here. Just as I am sure your fears were very real to you. How these fears were instilled in him is what matters. The knowledge of how the fears were instilled in him is necessary for SuziQ to address the root of the issue as his parent. I fear SuziQ is also unduly influenced by religious fantasy and will not be entirely effective in dispelling her child's fears. Just as I suspect your parents were unsuccessful in dispelling yours.

While I am sure your religious beliefs helped alleviate your fears and provide you with stability in your life, this does not make the foundation upon which those beliefs are built any more true.

Stories such as yours make for good blues songs (Hell Hound on my trail, The Devil's out ta getcha etc) but that is about it.