How to talk to my son about God

A couple nights ago, while pushing Elias on a swing, I said, “I want you to tell me a story.”

Elias smiled. “There was a pig who built his house on the sand. With straw. Then the wolf came. He huffed and he puffed. And the pig’s house washed away.”

Yes, my son’s story was a hybrid of the Three Little Pigs and Jesus’s story of the Foolish Man building his house on the sand. I laughed about that the whole walk back to our condo.

A couple mornings ago, Elias insisted on putting a bandaid over top of an already healed booboo. He said it hurt. So I gave in.

“I want a batman bandaid!”

He chose a “batman” bandaid that actually featured “Joker” rather than the caped crusader.

On the drive to preschool this morning, this conversation ensued:

“Daddy, why is Joker a bad guy?”

“Well, I guess because he keeps making bad choices instead of good choices.”

“Why he keep making bad choices? Did God make him that way?”

Again, I laughed, stammered, and then said something like, “Well, I’m sure God would love if Joker would make better choices, but sometimes making the right choices is difficult for people.”

I stopped right there. There was more I could have said, of course. But I didn’t see the point. As a parent, I’m learning that, when the topic of conversation is layered, a kind that is experiential, and often individually unique, I try to only answer the questions that Elias asks.

And too, I knew why Elias asked if God made Joker that way. He wasn’t being deep or contemplating Arminianism vs. Calvinism or questioning God. He was following his father’s logic. How did I know this? Because often Elias will ask me questions like the one he asked a couple weeks ago.

“Daddy, why do spiders make sticky webs?”

“So they can catch flies and other bugs. Spiders like to eat bugs.”

“Why do spiders like to eat bugs?” he said.

While I was certain there was a scientific explanation as to why spiders find bugs delicious, I didn’t have time to search Wikipedia, so instead I said, “Well, I guess that’s how God made spiders, to love eating bugs.”

“Why did God make them that way?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

Elias’s “Joker” question/comment was simple logic: If Daddy thinks spider like bugs because God made them that way, he might also think that Joker makes bad choices because God made him that way.

I’ve been praying a lot lately about how I should be talking to my son about God. Elias is only four. Now, I believe with all my heart that he’s a brilliant, thoughtful, and intelligent-beyond-all-reason four-year-old kid, but he’s hardly a little Gandhi. But he’s a lively, kind, hope-filled four-year-old boy who dreams big, believes bigger, and engages life with every ounce of his being. So for that reason, I’m very careful about how I talk to Elias about God.

If I think about all of this too much I become anxious. Mostly that’s because I was four when my family left a Methodist church to help start a Baptist church, an independent fundamental kind of Baptist church. I was four when I was told that I was a sinner, that I deserved Hell, that without asking Jesus into my heart, I might get left behind and be forced to suffer the Tribulation. That was a big part of my introduction to God.

Now that Elias is four, some of that baggage consumes my thoughts. My fears are stupid in some ways. Because for one, Jessica and I don’t attend the kind of church that I attended when I was a kid. The methods, beliefs, and teachings at Crosspoint differ greatly from those I encountered at my childhood church. Still, something I fear (or think about) every time I drop him off at Sunday school is that I’ll return to pick him up and he’ll come to me jumping up and down, shouting at the top of his lungs, “I asked Jesus into my heart, Daddy! I asked Jesus into my heart!!”

That might seem strange to some of you, I know. It seems a little strange to me, too. Yes, I want Elias to experience Jesus and possess a faith that encourages him to love God and to love people. I want that so much. However, I’ve tried really hard to ensure that Elias’s introduction to God is different than my own–you know, happier, not fear-based, not abrasive, not based on potential torment. I have faith that God is watching over Elias. But sometimes I struggle to have faith in Christians. And too, while I consider myself to be evangelical in many ways, my beliefs differ in some (many?) ways to a lot of evangelicals. And one of those differences is the evangelical “salvation experience”. I believe that asking Jesus into your heart is a method that we’ve added to Christianity. Some people suggest that this method began in the late 1800s and others say it was added as recently as the 1960s or 70s. Either way, it’s a way of “packaging” Christianity for children. And I’m not a fan.

So far “talking to Elias about God” has consisted of very little talking. We’ve simply invited him along on our faith journey. Jessica and I invite Elias to participate in the various ways we experience faith and God. He prays with us. He goes to church with us. He collects donations with us. Sometimes a conversation happens, like when he asks why we’re doing something and the “why” is related to faith or God, we tell him that. While our discussions of God and Jesus are certainly intentional at times, they aren’t forced. We don’t use God as a way to fearfully encourage “good behavior” nor do we use “God” as a manipulating force to get him to acknowledge “bad behavior”. And we also tell Elias or read to him stories from the Bible. Not every story. Just the ones that we think are age appropriate. For instance, we’ve avoided the “Noah story” so far (I mean, it’s not the cute little story that the board books make it out to be). Of course, Elias thinks he knows the story of Noah. “Noah is the naughty girl who ate the apple,” he told me once.

With time, I’m learning that much of the anxiety I experience is truly related to me. And I know that. And I’m wading/praying through that. I don’t want my fears and baggage to get in the way of Elias engaging (when he’s ready) the stories of God. Still, I’m very careful. Prayerfully intentional. And hopeful.

I pack Elias’s lunch each morning. A few months ago I started putting notes in his lunch box. Some days my notes remind him that I’m thinking about him or praying for him or that I love him. And sometimes I’ll write something like, “Elias, God loves you. God is always with you no matter what. Nobody can change that. Remember that today. Have a great lunch, buddy. I love you. Daddy.”

For now, that’s all the theology he needs.

 

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