FocusOnTheFamily

Minivan theology

Written by Margot Starbuck

When our first child was born eight years ago, my husband and I didn’t exactly have a game plan for how we’d share our faith with our progeny. But with two graduate theological degrees between us, how hard could it be?

During our daughter’s first year of life, we were truly brilliant. We simply repeated everything we heard from a Michael Card lullaby CD in normal speaking voices. We felt like masters of infant spiritual instruction.

Then our daughter learned how to speak.

We now have three young children whose theology-bending comments often remind me how difficult it can be to teach timeless truths to young minds.

Fast cars and unreachable puppies

One day I was running errands with our three car-seat-bound kids when my daughter’s stuffed puppy got thrown into the back of the van, just beyond arm’s reach.

A wail of despair came from the back seat. “The Lord cannot get my puppy because He’s in my heart.”

I’d never heard the good news sound so bad before.

Unmoved, my middle child wondered aloud, “Is God still in your heart when you swim underwater?”

“He is, Rollie!” I seized the teachable moment. “The cool thing is that He’s inside of you and outside of you.” I didn’t want him to follow in his sister’s footsteps and become sorely disenchanted with a ventricle-trapped God. “Even though you can’t see Him, He’s really there.”

“So if you bump into something invisible underwater, it’s God?”

“Possibly.”

Maybe the moment wasn’t as teachable as I’d thought. “Hey, why don’t we just look out the window? Look, there’s a cool sports car dealership! See the shiny cars?”

My youngest son, who dreams of driving a NASCAR vehicle to school, bemoaned, “Why did God make ’em, but police won’t let ’em drive dat fast?”

Ah, yes, the age-old question of theodicy. How can suffering and evil coexist with a benevolent God?

“I don’t know, Buddy.” He did make a good point. “What I do know is that I’m happy God gave you guys to me.”

Rollie wondered aloud, “Did God take a long time to make me?”

“When the world began, a long, long time ago, God imagined a Rollie,” I assured him. “Then He put you in my tummy.”

“Was God so strong to push me out of your tummy?” he asked.

“He was! Did you feel Him pushing?”

“Yeah, I did,” he said.

As we pulled into the library parking lot, I began to suspect my little ones might be more intimate with the Almighty than they were letting on.

I’ve lost control

Much to everyone’s dismay, the library was closed in observance of Good Friday. Apparently, if you’re under eight, the Lamb of God being sacrificed for the sins of the world doesn’t hold a candle to taking home a wooden puzzle and a Curious George book. I feared my kids would hold the disappointment against the Lord.

At bedtime that night, I attempted to do some damage control by explaining how each year we pause to remember the day Jesus died.

“Does anyone know how He died?” I asked, hoping to move into an explanation of the Cross.

“Jesus died for our sins!” cried out Rollie from the top bunk.

“Does anyone know how Jesus died?” I threw out a few examples to get them on the right track. “Was He shot? Did He get hit by a car? Did He drown?”

Rollie laughed. “Of course He didn’t drown! He can walk on water!”

“Good point, Buddy. So the next time you bump into a stranger underwater, you can rule Jesus out.”

My youngest piped up. “I know how He died.”

“Why don’t you tell us, Abhi?”

“Some guys took Him and nailed Him to wood that looks like an X.”

Making a mental note to touch base with his ophthalmologist and his kindergarten teacher, I let the “X” slide. I figured it was as close as we were going to get.

“That’s right, Abhi,” I said. “Good job!”

Duly impressed, his older brother marvelled, “You were listening in Sunday school! I don’t listen at all.” This confession made his walking-on-water insight a much bigger miracle, in my mind, than it already was.

Where were we?

“Anyway, on Easter morning, Jesus’ friends realized that He was alive,” I announced.

Something seemed to click in Rollie’s memory as he shouted, “He was spirit!”

By denying Jesus’ humanity, my six-year-old had fallen for the oldest heresy in the book – Docetism! Perhaps the following day we would re-enact the fifth-century Council of Chalcedon with the boys’ Lego figures.

“No, actually, Rollie, Jesus had a body,” I explained. “And when we die, God gives us new bodies, too!”

“Yeah,” Abhi confirmed, “God takes off our skins, makes new bones and puts our skins back on.”

“Um,” I interrupted, “that’s actually orthopaedic surgery, but –”

Undaunted, he continued, “When we die, we lie down like we’re floating.” At this point, my son flopped backward on his bed and rolled his eyes like a cartoon character who had just been hit over the head with a frying pan.

Racking my brain to think where he’d picked up that little trick, I realized he must have learned the “dead man’s float” in swim class. I’d been tracking what my children were learning in school and in church, but it hadn’t crossed my mind to monitor the teaching at swim lessons.

Looking for a bigger stage, Abhi hopped off his bunk and pointed to the carpet. “OK, pretend this is a cloud,” he said and fell down to repeat the eye-rolling dead-man routine. It was clearly time for our spiritual train wreck to slide into the station.

“Anyway, the big point is that Easter is not about the candy and the outfits. Easter is about Jesus being alive!” I said it joyfully to make it sound as great as candy.

“And,” added Rollie with exuberance, “we can go to the library!”

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Margot Starbuck shepherds her three children with her husband, Peter, in Durham, North Carolina.

© 2008 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

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