(Tim Herrera is an author, newspaper columnist and writer living in Sacramento, California. This father of four is the author of two books:I'm Their Dad! Not Their Babysitter! Or,“Where the Dust Never Settles.”)
Kids say the darndest things. No, wait. That’s an overused phrase. How about: kids say the cutest things. No. That’s not going to apply here. How about: kids sometimes ask incredibly complex questions that cause adults to squirm and that complexity multiplies when it’s other peoples’ kids who are doing the asking.
That’s closer to the point I’m trying to make. Our children have all taken turns asking some extremely difficult questions. My wife and I have sometimes stretched the truth to provide easy answers. Well, actually my wife always gives the best answer possible. I often take the easy way out and offer up an occasional “ask your mother” type of response, or avoid the truth all together. “Daddy, why is the sky blue?”
“Because the color green was already taken by the grass, sweetheart.” When it’s your own child, you can skate around the truth, until you can figure out the right answer. However, when it’s someone else’s child doing the asking, it is a different ballgame. My wife agreed to be a religious education teacher this year. Good Shepherd Church needed help teaching the children of our parish and my wife, as she often does, volunteered. If people ask for assistance, whether it’s with school or church, my wife finds a way to squeeze a few more hours out of her week to help. On the other hand, I manage to squirm out of volunteering opportunities. That’s what makes us the perfect couple.
My wife usually assisted with religious education classes in the past, but this time she decided to take on the big job. She thought, fourth grade religion class, they’ll talk about being kind to your neighbor, treating people like you want to be treated and kneeling and standing at the right times during mass. How hard could it be? But always remember; never ask how hard could it be. You might just find out. The class has ten students. My nine-year-old son is among them. The kids come to our house for an hour each week. They sit on the floor and discuss their lessons. Or at least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It seems the curious kids are conjuring up lessons of their own and my wife finds herself scrambling for the right answers to their questions. The other day, the kids started asking about Jesus. Seems like a good topic of discussion for a group of fourth graders, right? Well? Things went smoothly until the kids lined up like a firing squad and blasted away with some involved questions.
“How did Jesus get to be Jesus? Wasn’t there anybody else who wanted to be him?”
“Yeah, how come I couldn’t be Jesus?”
“How did Jesus get in Mary’s belly?”
My wife is a trained teacher. She knows how to handle a classroom full of inquisitive kids, but she is not a theologian. She answered the questions as best she could between wiping beads of sweat from her brow while trying to move along with the lesson. By the time the parents came, picked up their children and rescued my wife, her head was spinning. I laughed when she repeated their tough questions but she didn’t see as much humor in the situation as I did. Of course, I could laugh. I wasn’t the one getting grilled with all the Jesus questions.
So, the weekend after my wife’s inquisition, she cornered our pastor, Father Philip Wells, and replayed the entire ordeal for him. He smiled occasionally and laughed a few times, and even raised his eyebrows at some of the kids’ questions.
“The kids in your class are at an age where they are very inquisitive,” Father Wells said as he smiled. Then he advised my wife on how to handle some of the real toughies in regards to Jesus and subjects like heaven and hell. Father also suggested that she set aside a few minutes in each class for questions that did not pertain to the lesson, but to remind the young interrogators that they need to stay on task. And the best thing he told her was that if she felt uncomfortable with any of the questions, that she should refer the inquiring children to him.
Kids do ask the darndest questions. And it’s nice to know that if you don’t have the answers, you can always say “ask your pastor.”
