Child abuse or proper Christian teaching?

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Please watch this video, and then vote:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppQhleVuWPM[/youtube]

I think it is good. Kids needs to be treated a little harshly. Just right. IMO. I am muslim though. And you know maybe that we dont have gatherings for kids like this. ... But we do get educated when we are children in Quran shcools.

Is there a difference?

There sure is.

How anyone would find this child abuse is beyond me.

It's intense, but she makes a good point, there are to many Christians who go to church and then act a fool outside. Think about the gang bangers who go to Sunday service, then kill each other on Monday. The bully who goes to church and hears about love thy neighbor, then taunts and harasses kids on Monday. Yeah, it's unpleasant to confront bad things, but it's part of growing up. When I did something wrong, I was made to know it, and I learned from it. My parents didn't turn a blind eye to it. It wasn't a happy time, but it was a learning experience.

Just typical religion crap. Some people do consider religion to be child abuse. I even met someone at work who said not celebrating any holidays is child abuse.

So what about the Christian churchgoers who commit other sins? Aren't they also being a fool outside of church?

Is there any Christian who has never sinned?

This is a clip from Jesus Camp, a horrible place intended to brainwash children into being good little anti-choice Republican theocrats.

So you think those children were gang bangers? No? Then why mention it?

Lying to young children about "phoneys" and "God's army" while someone wails into two microphones, telling them they need to be washed... that's psychological abuse.

When parenting does not work out, this is where religious parents send their kids, I would assume. Some parents lack sensibility and a respectable amount of authority, and their words do not matter much to their kids. So the kids are sent to jesus camp to learn more about how certain teachers perceive the way that christianity works in hopes of fixing them.

Any young kid would pick heaven over burning forever in darkness... The mere thought that they will be tortured in the after life due to a few mishaps in behavior can haunt a person's mind in their current life. Heck, just the thought of dying is frightening as f**k to a kid, but then you add burning in pure darkness for eternity, well then...

I do not believe this is okay, but I can't bring myself to admitting this is child abuse as of yet. It is wrong though, in my opinion. Very sad too. I'm not completely decided if it is child abuse or not yet***

This clip is far too short to determine the proper context for what was shown, but it didn't seem like abuse to me. One of the toughest things about Christianity is accepting that we're all sinners, and based on our own merits, we don't deserve once bit of grace from God. Jesus even said Himself, "I have come to call sinners, not those who think they are already good enough".

That said, I think teaching these concepts to very young children has to be done with a great amount of prayer and reservation. Horrible groups who abuse Jesus' message with hate like the Westboro Baptists already give the repentant among us a bad reputation; we don;t need to make it worse ourselves, by stressing love or justice to the exclusion of either. God is equal in both, and presenting a healthy balance is vital, especially with young audiences. We should never sacrifice the truth, but Jesus also knew terror isn't a reliable way for gaining love or trust.

Between the ages of 11 and 15 I was routinely beaten with a cane by the headmaster of my school in England for refusing to say prayers aloud to Jesus. I learned how much of a sinner I was for declaring myself to be an atheist and that I deserved to be thrashed for it. I was not an isolated example of these brutal attempts at indoctrination. No wonder Christianity is dying in the UK, churches falling into dereliction and Christianity regarded as nothing more than an eccentric hobby by most. Good riddance to Christianity. Christianity == child abuse simple as that. If you don't use physical punishment to brutalise children to indoctrinate them into becoming Christians you put evil and manipulative images in their minds, declaring them sinful and dirty and unfit etc or try to brainwash them with images of burning in hell. I spit on your Christianity.

Christianity has dug itself into a deep hole. On the one hand its supporters say Christianity promotes love and morality; yet the public face of Christianity is often quite the opposite: For example mainstream Christians hating on homosexual people - not just as individual Christians but as a matter of organised policy! Even holding organised demonstrations against the civil rights of gay people. I've seen the bigoted and evil face of Christianity for too many years now. You speak of love but fill children with self doubt, fear and loathing.

^ well said

So if the parents dont care to educate their children, its the children that needs to be corrected and fixed, and not the parents? O_o

Its simply wrong to punish a kid for the failures of its parents. Whats the message of it? I need to be here, because my parents acted wrong? So what I learn here, is that I must face, consequences of others people wrong doing?

You certainly suffered child abuse because you were not a Christian, but it is unfair to tar all Christians with that brush.

From my limited experience, I believe a liberal Christian upbringing is the best way to install morals into a child. The best people I know- by secular standards- are liberal Christians. Now some of them have fairly abhorrent views about atheists and homosexuals, but they don't let those views impact on their actions.

A secular upbringing, again from my limited experience, is far better than a conservative religious upbringing.

Good riddance to conservative Christianity and indeed all forms of religious fundamentalism, literalism, extremism, and so forth. Liberal religions still have a place though, IMO.

To be fair many religions, even spirituality bases a lot of teachings on abusing the young to make them learn and submit. Even some Buddhism does, just modern day books are a lot more toned down, because of what others may say and of coarse the law. Many of the books I have on Buddhist fundamentals start out with expressing how they detest the fact that child abuse is not used enough in the modern day, and how weakened a society has become without the regular beatings of kids for misbehaving.