My partner and I had a difficult conversation recently about how we plan to handle her brother when her mother passes.
Her mother is obviously religious and raised him religiously Christian.
He is a sweet man with a severe developmental disability. Things literally take a very long time for him to learn. He still acts like a teen and he’s pushing 40. That’s not his fault, that’s just life. We love him.
The thing is though…
We don’t believe in religion, but we also think that when his mother finally passes, it would not be wise to try to turn him from Christianity.
He struggled and still struggles years later due to the passing of his father. The idea of being able to see his father in heaven is big to him.
At one point, he panicked because he was playing DOOM 2016 on his game console, and he asked my partner (his sister) if he was going to go to hell for playing it. She reminded him that the Doomslayer kills demons and loves bunnies and reminded him the themes of the game say demons are bad, even if the game itself is violent.
We don’t think it’s worth it to try to break his brain when he’s over 40 and his mom finally passes. Hell, she’s in good health, he could be over 50 when it happens. He has a learning disability and it would literally be unfair to him to try to force a change in belief on him at such a late stage with such a disability.
It’s not worth it to wreck his mental health so we can feel better about being “truthful” with him. We’re focusing on trying to relate healthy interpretations of Christianity to him.