Thou Shalt Not : Part 1

The Girl and Her Religion
by Margaret Slattery

(Page 13 of 19)

In our effort to get away from the harsh negative teaching of the past which made young people feel that life meant "don't," we have made the mistake of failing to teach with power the fact that there are things to which God's law and man's law say thou shall not. "I did not know it would do any harm," is oftentimes a truthful statement and the girl has the right to be carefully, wisely and sanely taught the things to which she must say no. A girl's religion must have not only the constraining power which sends her out to do the kindly deed, say the word of comfort and cheer, give of her time and her talent to help make life easier for those who find it hard, but it must have the restraining power which shall keep her from self-indulgence and sin.

Whenever the thou shalt not side of religion is mentioned the girls themselves and those responsible for their training immediately think of the question of amusements, which is after all only a part of the greater question of how much leisure a girl should have and what she should do with it. Preachers, teachers and Christians generally, differ so widely on the matter of disputed amusement questions that thou shalt not loses its force. It is the parents' right to decide the girl's amusements and determine her social life and when one sees the length to which parents permit and even encourage their daughters to go, he knows that the thou shalt not might well be said to them. When parents do not care what their girls do, or are too careless and ignorant to realize danger, when the girls are without friends and unprotected, then the teacher of religion must without hesitation, forcefully and with the arguments of fact, teach them to say "no" to the things which she believes can bring only harm, which weaken the power to resist other evils and which are unhealthy for the growing girl. One may teach with feeling and power the "thou shalt not" in which she believes without uttering bitter words of condemnation of those who differ with her.

Religion and the law together have the right to say to the unprotected girl, lacking wisdom, without discretion, eager for fun and adventure, ignorant of danger, thou shall not. The words should be written over every unchaperoned or inadequately chaperoned high school dance, over the public dance hall, over the cabaret, over the vaudeville where the vulgar hides behind a mask, over every place which by its very nature opens doors of temptation and lowers powers of resistance. The teachers of religion, and all agencies for moral training and uplift, because of the comparative helplessness of girlhood, have the right to teach by every means at their command thou shalt not.

Some one must teach the growing girl that extravagance is sin; some one must say thou shalt not to her common faults of promising without thought of the cost of keeping the promise, of exaggeration and untruthfulness. Some one must help her see the utter folly of snobbishness and false pride. In some way she must be taught the cruelty and meanness of gossip, the results of a sharp tongue and a critical spirit. She must be shown the sin of ingratitude and the curse of jealousy and envy. In fact the old ten commandments are needed by the girlhood of today as truly as they were needed by that great army of people in the days of the youth of a race, when their great law giver and leader strove to save them from the results of their own ignorance and newly acquired liberty.

Who teaches thou shalt not to the girl of today? Indirectly, a great many people. Directly, clearly, definitely so that she understands and is impressed, very few. The Sunday-school in a half-hour a week attempts to do it, but the Sunday-school reaches a very small part of the girlhood of our land, and its work with those whom it has reached is often ineffective. It is at present engaged in a serious effort to make its teachings more effective and far reaching. The public school is not directly teaching the thou shalt not, for teaching it does not mean saying it, in the form of a command. It does much indirect moral teaching, which is invaluable. It is experimenting with direct moral teaching and many of the experiments have shown highly gratifying results, which lead us to hope that the day is not far distant when direct teaching of the common laws of moral living shall find a place in every school. We shall have to find some new definition first, for such words as success, wealth, honesty, courage, honor and the long list in the vocabularies which the pupils in every school make for themselves.

In reacting against the thundering negatives of the past, the church has, in the decade or more that lies behind us, been teaching an unbalanced religion. "Thou shalt," and "thou shalt not" must be taught together if the best results are to be reached. In individual instances so great success has been won by the teacher of religion that his method is worth one's earnest study.

One morning there came into Sunday-school class a very ordinary looking little girl of ten years. Her father was a truck driver, her mother had been a domestic. There were four children in the home, the little girl being next to the youngest. The parents had no relation to any church. The two older children had turned out great disappointments to them and when a neighbor invited the ten-year-old to go to Sunday-school the mother gave her consent, saying that perhaps the church could keep her from following her brother and sister. It did.

In that home there was no moral instruction, no moral suasion. When the children had told a lie directly to the mother they were punished severely. When they told a lie to a teacher or neighbor the mother was their defender and they escaped punishment. They heard their mother lie to her husband, to her neighbors, to the rent collector and the grocer. They learned not to fear a lie but to fear being discovered in it. They became clever liars and the little girl at ten was an adept. For disobedience, cheating, taking food and pennies they were alternately turned over to their father for punishment or shielded from his wrath according to the mother's temper at the time of the offense. They were not taught or helped to hate sin or to see it in its hideous aspect.

Thou shalt not was a matter of convenience, not of principle.

Copyright, 1913 by Luther H. Cary
Fifth Printing, The Pilgrim Press
Boston