This morning, as I was driving my daughters (Anna, 3 and
Mary, 1) to school, Anna and I had a chance to talk. We don’t always have such
a chance in the mornings, since it wasn’t till recently that I conceded that
Mary wasn’t going to get a cat-nap on the drive (she often wakes up at 5:30 am
and life is easier if she does—but she’s been over her morning nap this week).
Anna and I spend a good bit of time talking while driving
since we spend at least an hour each day total in the car together. Usually
these conversations are pretty simple ones, but today Anna had her Wheaties, it
seems.
She asked two questions which would cause any parents to
pause:
1.
What is God?
2.
Tell me about Santa. (Technically this isn’t a
question but you get the point)
Now I am in no way a parenting expert. And there’s a context
to these questions that is different for every family and kid. We are pretty
open with our girls (not that Mary knows the difference) about life. During the
past 14 months, my father and grandfather died, and my brother Dan committed
suicide. We don’t share all details of these, but we decided early on that as
far as possible, we didn’t want to tell our girls anything we had to un-teach
them. Unfolding lessons, yes. Having to say, “Well, that’s not actually true,
that’s just what we told you.” No.
I thought I’d share how I approached these questions. Not as
the example of how you should, but just as one way, and to share why I said
what I said.
WHAT IS GOD?
First off, I thought this question was a doozy. I thought it
was insightfully put. Not “Who is God?” But “WHAT is God?” And let’s be honest,
both of those questions still confound adults. So first off, it seemed to me
Anna also didn’t need a simple answer.
But before I started, there were some questions I had to ask
her, including at least the first question anyone put on the spot (whether put
on the spot by a child OR an adult): What do you mean?
Anna’s reply: “How is God in the whole world?”
This still doesn’t narrow things down too much. Yeah, really
not at all.
But here’s the thing—why would we give our kids answers that
God doesn’t even try to give US? How do the people of God come to know God and
how God is at work in the world? Not by theological treatise. Fortunately. But
by recounting, yes, how God has been known to be at work in the world. And
where do we find this? In scripture.
If someone asks you about God, and you start spouting off
theological principles, stop yourself. Even Jesus doesn’t do this. Instead,
Jesus offers parables. Because as it turns out, it’s remarkably difficult to
convey in direct language much about the nature of God. We encounter God through
the narrative of the people of God. And that narrative begins at our beginning.
That’s why I found myself recounting for Anna the story of
creation and of Adam and Eve. Because that is where our human understanding of
God begins. And it’s hard to go wrong when just referring to scripture. Ok,
maybe that’s not true. But it’s a safer place than any to start, I think.
Now the concept of a God who existed before anything is hard
to imagine. The best I could come to explaining this to Anna (who clearly
balked at this notion) was to talk about how I was alive before she was born—even
before I was pregnant with her. (Context again, we used natural childbirth
methods for both girls, and Anna was present for her sister’s birth and so she’s
got a clearer grasp of all this than most three year olds).
Anna seemed to understand this comparison, but really, how
do any of us “grasp” the world that existed before our presence—even our
comprehension of the world around us and our ability to retain memories. It’s
the difference between being told by someone of their experience on a zipline
and actually DOING it ourselves. It’s not merely a difference in degrees of “getting”
the experience.
I talked about God creating all this awesome stuff and us
getting be part of it, but not listening to God. A 3 year old definitely
understands what it means to be told not to do something but to want to do it
(and in fact TO DO it). But this God that created us, always loved us, and even
when Adam and Eve faced the consequences of their actions, God still loved them.
Long story short—when we get questions about God, or our
faith from our kids, we don’t have to try to grasp onto whatever threads of
theology we’ve picked up. We don’t have to try to explain the nature of God in
abstract. God’s people have never primarily done so. Let’s cut ourselves a
break. And draw our children into the Biblical narrative that has formed God’s
people for so many years.
Now the Santa thing…
TELL ME MORE ABOUT
SANTA
I suspect there is far more variety of the Santa thing than
the above question. Maybe it’s because it’s hard to be “wrong” about it, and we
feel more comfortable taking creative license. When we first had Anna, it was
very important to me that my husband and I discuss how we were going to handle
Santa in our household. My husband was far less concerned about it, confident
it would work its way out. The truth was/is probably somewhere in between.
I know some families where the magic of Santa is an entire
undertaking. And impressively so.
For me, this issue has three elements:
1.
Not wanting to teach something we have to later “un-teach”
2.
Not wanting (admittedly selfishly so) Anna to
miss out on a whole experience other kids have (and one which I’m fairly sure
my mom would find a way around anyway, or at least would be very sad about)
3.
I am a pastor. I am one heck of a busy person
around Christmas. I ain’t got no time for some of this stuff people do…
My answer to Anna was, “Well, Santa isn’t a regular person. Santa
is magical.”
She followed up with a question about Santa and chimneys, to
which I referred her to my original statement.
She then seemed concerned to know if Santa sleeps all the
time aside from at Christmas. I managed to change the point here (God I can
handle on one cup of coffee, Santa, not so much…)
At any rate (and because when I mentioned these questions to
Anna’s teachers they were curious about this), Santa is a rather minor figure
around our house. Brings a gift or two (we had a good crop of options from our
last church where families did lots of different things). We read “The Night
Before Christmas,” leave cookies out, and if we happen to get a photo with
Santa, so be it. But we also talk about St. Nicholas, and yeah, we do actually
try to make Christmas about the birth of Jesus. I just don’t feel the need to
sack Santa in order to do so.
As it turns out, your kids will follow your lead on a lot of
stuff. Especially at the age ours are now.
That brings me to my last, and really, my major point.
What you tell your
kids now is going to be the foundation for what you teach them later. That doesn’t
mean you won’t get to update or even correct things. I, for one, lack the
memory to try to recall inaccurate stuff I’ve said, so I try to avoid doing
that with everyone—so this is both a practical and ethical thing for me
personally.
Related, you don’t
have to have all the answers. OR, maybe
you shouldn’t try to make stuff easy for your kids that still isn’t easy for
you to understand.
I hope this is reassuring for you. It is for me.
But again, all of this is context. It’s rooted in how I was
taught, how I grew up. For a variety of reasons, yes, perhaps because my father
was a pastor and my mother was also quite knowledgeable about the faith, my
memory of my own formation in the faith doesn’t recall simplistic answers and
in fact revealed to me the complexity of a deep and abiding faith. Also, some
crazy stuff happened when I was growing up. It’s hard to give your kids easy
answers when crazy stuff happens.
In the end, we all bring up our kids differently. I don’t
think you should answer your kids the same way I do mine—in a different context
these answers might not work or produce even what I would consider the desired
result.
I do think, however, that we should train up our kids ON
PURPOSE and striving for a particular goal. I want my girls to be followers of
Jesus Christ. I want them to value that relationship and to treasure it for its
complex, rich, grace and love-filled awesomeness. I want them to be deeply
suspicious of people who try to give simple answers. And I want them to know
how to read scripture on their own and in community. So I need to model all
these things.
It’s hard to parent on purpose. Some days we cannot. But we
probably can more than we think.
So next time your kid asks a hard question, one that makes
you both chuckle and shirk at the same time, give yourself a minute or two.
Stall, if you have to. Ask them what they mean by their question. And try to
give them the answer you actually want them to ponder. Not the one that shuts
them up the fastest. And maybe, just maybe, a five minute conversation in the
car with your kid will be able to begin to gird them for the journey ahead and
to be able to grow in their own faith journeys in ways that decades from now
will have set them on the right path.
In the meantime, we all need a lot of prayer (for ourselves and for each other) for this incredibly challenging task of raising up children, and helping them to come to know God. We also need each other--no parent or set of parents (or grandparents, or whoever is primary caregivers for a child) can do this on their own. Thank God for the community of faith.
