Competitive Piety

I am convinced that we seek a structure for our beliefs because we, as humans, are drawn towards uniting with a realm we don’t know or understand. So, we name this realm, make rules for it, and proceed in a hierarchical fashion to assure our inclusion in this wholeness. 

I was attending one of Dr. Clarissa Pincola-Estes workshops on “depth psychology,” the examination of the unconscious mind and how it manifests in our lives. There was a lovely young and pregnant woman sitting next to me and we were both captivated as Dr. Estes interpreted what turned out to be one of my dreams.  I realized that in the dream I was looking for holiness and connection to spirit outside of any traditional or even non-traditional organized religion.  The dream revealed my rejection of, what I called competitive piety — the notion that one belief system is superior to all others. Turning to my friend, I commented that I felt that competitive piety destroys the Child’s Soul. She smiled and said, “D’vorah, write that book.”

Competitive piety says to us: “I am better than you, higher, holier, and closer to God. I will be saved and welcomed into heaven, salvation, and transcendence… and you, unless you follow “my way” you will not be. This is a fundamental aspect of most religions. I want to focus on how this phenomenon damages the Child’s soul and what we can do about it. 

Children are born without prejudice; each of us was born without any formulated judgments or any sense of separateness from all creation. Every human child is born knowing this. They know this as part of their cellular memory. I also believe that we carry this “memory of what cosmic wholeness felt like” (Cosmic Way I-Ching) throughout our lives.  

No child feels or knows separation until they experience it and are taught it from their culture.  Through the process of “introjection”— the unconscious adoption of the ideas, feelings, and attitudes of others—children reflexively adopt their parents’ views, institutional beliefs, and societal myths that give them direction (for better and for worse) for living within our families and society.  Introjection occurs even before our families can teach us the rules, traditions, and values from their own belief systems. This is how humans perpetuate belief systems within society, and seek a formulated connection back to a Divine wholeness.  I am advocating for sharing your belief systems with your Child in a manner that honors and reinforces a naturally occurring connection to cosmic wholeness.

I am convinced that we seek a structure for our beliefs because we, as humans, are drawn towards uniting with a realm we don’t know or understand. So, we name this realm, make rules for it, and proceed in a hierarchical fashion to assure our inclusion in this wholeness. 

Depending on the tradition, this can present problems for the Child and for the Child Self. For example, many spiritual traditions profess that the Child is born with a defective animal nature, and that nature is inherently evil and needs to change to avoid disastrous consequences in this life and beyond. For children, such notions become embedded in their psyches. The message is, “There is something fundamentally wrong with me.”  This belief stays with us until it’s brought to consciousness and rejected. In addition, we are told, explicitly and implicitly, that our beliefs, religions or traditions are truer and better than others, and therefore, other forms of piety are less worthy than ours. When surrounded by friends with different beliefs, the Child, and even our Child Selves can develop a fear that those we love and care about will suffer.

My friend Kathleen was raised in a Catholic home but her mom instructed her children by saying: “Don’t believe everything the nuns tell you at school; come to me first.” This was helpful when Kathleen entered first grade at the local Catholic school and became very concerned when a Sister told her that if someone was not baptized Catholic, they would go to hell, and she included some pretty graphic descriptions. They even prayed in class for Kathleen’s non-Catholic relatives, by name. She also told Kathleen that, even as a child, she could baptize someone in an emergency. Kathleen became terrified that her non-Catholic friends were going to suffer. Being a 6-year-old, who was a “good girl,” and who loved her religious training and her friends, she secretly convinced each of them to let her baptize them. This was the only way she could be sure they would be safe. When a mom from the neighborhood called up Kathleen’s mom to let her in on her kid’s new secret, she was horrified. Kathleen explained she had done it: “just in case.” 

It is often not easy to acknowledge the value and validity of other traditions. This is especially difficult when they have aspects repugnant to our values, such as when they are patriarchal, or misogynistic or when we consider those traditions impure and sinful. What we can do is teach our children to accept the piety of others, even if that means “praying for them,” and teach this with the recognition that no one has a monopoly on the truth. This means that those “others” are not less worthy of love, even when we reject or don’t respect aspects of their belief systems. 

Personally, this has not been easy for me. But I have learned that I can admit my confusion and struggle to my Child, and even my Child Self, and do so even as I preach understanding. The Child Self needs to hear this acceptance, especially if it suffers feelings of inferiority for not believing the teachings of its own family of origin. The Adult Self may be in control, but the Child Self, unless reassured, may unconsciously wallow in insecurities and possibly ignore their own needs and desires as a form of self-punishment. 

Speaking to your Child Self:

“There is nothing wrong with you. You were taught what it meant to be good and accepted. You were taught how to believe and what to do with those beliefs. You may or may not choose them now, but whatever choice you make, there is nothing wrong with you, and you are not better or worse than those you came from.” 

Speaking to the Child we may be raising:

“Everyone is different, every family is different and what they believe is different from what we believe, and I do not understand their ways and I prefer ours.  When you become an adult, you can make your own choices.  Right now, in our family, this is how we do things.”

If, indeed, the Child is born with a spirit, a soul energy that lacks bias and is universal and whole, then it will be painful when they, or those they care about, are rejected or condemned for their spiritual belief systems. This can have the effect of killing the soul and spirit.

We, as adults, are called upon to widen the breadth of our acceptance, admit to the Child how hard it can be, and place our energy on supporting the Child’s innate nature. As a result, the Child Self, who may have come to know a different way of being or of believing, will be able to integrate these differences—within themselves and perhaps with their family— without losing a sense of self-acceptance. And we can heal our Child Selves by recognizing that our sense of being “defective” arose in an environment of competitive piety that is as old as humanity, but is not true or helpful. 

I am aware of how idealistic this is. Dislodging the authority of most religious institutions seems almost impossible. I am reminded, however, of something Dr. Estes repeats in her workshops: “It is all made up, all of it, but it does matter what you choose.” I am suggesting that we choose to be honest regarding our certainty, claim it as ours if we have it, but not as “better than” someone else’s. And admit that we are not sure when we are not. 

When you bring religion to your child, you must ask yourself: What is my intention? Do I want the child to believe that “our way” is superior? What if they stray or act in a way that is against my religion? What will be the result—a child who has no place to be their true self within our family or who gets the message that they are flawed?  This is an ancient dilemma and is grounded in and results in trauma.  In every generation, we have seen competitive piety become the source of hatred, destruction, and death. When you give your child your religion, make it an intentional choice. 

This is what you might say: 

“I love this part of my religion, it is familiar, and it is joyful, or it is serious and makes me think, or it confuses me and that’s ok. It is what I want you to have, even though it is full of unanswered question and that is ok. At some point in your life, you will make your own choices.”

Presenting beliefs as a choice is daunting for many. If you truly believe that a specific higher power and faith holds your Child and your Child Self safe in the world, presenting your beliefs as a choice can be frightening. What they choose, however, will depend on whether you let them know that you honor that this will become their choice and is not a reflection of absolute one-way truth. It will depend on how you present religion to them.  And once again, what is chosen matters, not because it is superior or the only way, but because it connects us to what we were born knowing, that we are all one. We are not separate, what is done to me is done to all of us. If you practice being open and uncertain, your religion will not be corrupted by competitive piety and your Child and Child Self will get a chance to remember what they were born knowing. 

Cut your child a break, get them off the competitive piety hierarchy. In my belief system and experience, we are not deprived of gravity because we did not meditate enough, take enough sacraments, or follow enough of the rules. No one is superior, and it matters what you choose because love and kindness are a choice.

©D'vorah Horn 2025. We invite you to share this work, but please do not copy any portion without attribution to D'vorah Horn.