The Looney Bin
I try my best to block out days like that. Later that night, I was downing a pint of ice cream and wondered just what I was doing wrong, and thought about how patient God the Father is. We mess up over and over, kick, scream, cry, dig in our heels and He still tenderly leads us. Yes, sometimes He has to get our attention with more drastic measures, but He is so good. I remember feeling ashamed as a Christian parent: yes, I brought up Jesus in the conversation, but put a little sarcastic and exasperated twist in there. Dr. Dobson would not approve…
The other day I was thinking, I wonder how the Israelites in the Bible made their children behave? Imagine what a wonderful self-help book that would be! Think about it: if their kids back talked, they were stoned to death. (I have yet to find any articles from Focus on the Family advising this method.) I have trouble just getting my kids to stop putting fruit loops in the VCR. The children of Israel were duty bound to follow the Law in all things. Remember when they marched around Jericho? Every day, for seven days, God told them to march silently around that city. “No noise shall come forth from your mouth…” How did they keep their kids quiet? Whatever it was, it could be on the parenting best seller list at Barnes and Noble.
Yet, even with all my blunders, I can tell that something spiritual is sinking into my little ankle-biters brains. Even if their theology is, well, a little skewed. Not too long ago my four year old came up with a little New Testament and said she wanted to tell me a Bible story. I said “Oh, I love Bible stories! Which one are you going to tell me?” She said, “Momma, we are gonna learn all about Jonah. There was this man named Jonah. And God tol’ him to go talk to some peoples, but Jonah said ‘No way, Jose!’ Then Jonah ranned away, Momma.” Expressing the proper amount of surprise, I said “He did?” She said “Yep! And Jonah went and got on a boat, but a storm came.” (At this point her little face showed concern and mounting frustration.) She said “And Momma, it was so bad ‘cause there were some mean men who threw Jonah off that boat. That is not nice!” I told her “Well honey, technically speaking, Jonah asked them to throw him off the boat, but yes, it’s generally not nice to throw people out of boats.” She stopped, closed her eyes, raised her hands and reverently said, “Oh, but Momma, they did it in Jesus’ name”. I thought, Well that’s just great. We can do whatever we want as long as it’s in Jesus’ name. The next morning my husband left for work and said he would kill some employees, but he would do it ‘in Jesus’ name’! No wonder the child has problems.