We often hear that we should not impose our beliefs upon others. In ways we agree with that statement–and in ways we do not. Ryan Dueck is not a fundamentalist. He is not even a conservative. He is a liberal writing for a liberal publication. But he has some useful reflections upon whether it is even possible to avoid imposing beliefs upon others. Read him at the Christian Century blog.
I think that if pressed most of us would say that responsible parenting requires at least some imposition of views, unfashionable as it might be to admit this and much as we might be pleased to imagine that the sum total of our parental duty is to present our young saplings with a smorgasbord of ideological options from which to choose for their independent selves. Whatever we might say, we all do this, even if only by the example we set (or fail to set). We are always indoctrinating our children into some vision of what matters and what doesn’t in the world. There’s no avoiding imposing our views.
