My intelligent 9-year-old son just finished reading The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. It’s children’s book, and features greek gods Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and Athena.

We were driving home from Applebee’s last night, and he told me that the book was part fiction, part non-fiction.

“Well it has Zeus and Hades and Poseidon” (he mispronounces all the names badly).

“Ok, and what’s the non-fiction parts?” I ask. He is confused. He was referring to the Greek gods as the NON-FICTION parts of the book.

(Quick background, I grew up Catholic + went to a few other churches with my mom as a teen. I looked at other religions in research, but I’ve come out pretty much agnostic, bordering on atheistic. I don’t take my kids to any church.)

Earlier this year, I kiddingly suggested to a coworker that I may as well believe in Greek mythology vs. Judeo-Christian “mythology.” I did some Googling and found out that there are virtually no believers left of Zeus, and it’s too big of a project to revive it all by myself :) I do believe there’s a good chance that 2,000 years from now, people will look back on both religions as quaint, outdated, and ultimately made-up.

So imagine my shock to discover that my son “believes” in Zeus. Some part of me feels guilt for not “bringing my kid up properly”, the other part says “why not?”

He still believes in Santa Claus (due to my own lies) so why can’t he believe that Zeus is real?