Understanding theory of God not easy for children

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Editor’s Note: Home Front is a parenting column written by NEWS staffers. Renee Ordway is a veteran reporter who covers courts and legal issues. She is the mother of a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old.

No matter what your religion or the extent of your faith, chances are if you are a parent you will at some point have “The Talk.”

It often happens shortly after your toddler begins forming independent thoughts and figures out how to talk. As a parent you are, of course, the knower of all things. This lasts until they turn 8, by the way, at which time your mind begins to deteriorate until they turn 11, at which point you know absolutely nothing at all.

But until then, kids tend to have this amazing need to ask questions that they don’t know the answers to, and, being the knower of all things, you are expected to have the answer.

I’m right into the thick of this right now. With a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old, I have many moments of utter brilliance, and, if I happen not to be feeling particularly swift at a given moment, I have become an expert at deflecting the pass to the other knower of all things – Dad.

Now before you all come unglued on me by mentioning “The Talk” and toddlers in the same paragraph, you should know that I’m not talking about “That Talk.”

I’m talking about the “God Talk.”

When my 3-year-old daughter was still an only child, she and I had our most compelling question-and- answer sessions in the car.

The car seat, it seemed, was her place for reflection, and after about five minutes of watching the world pass by her through the car window, the questions would spew forth.

Some were typical. Why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from? Can I be a trash man when I grow up? The usual.

I’d glance at her in my rearview mirror, her small, sneaker-clad feet swinging back and forth and her round brown eyes cast upon me expectantly.

The sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. Mommies have a special passageway that allows babies to get out (my best friend used this on her son, by the way, and he decided he’d “like to see that when we get home”) and yes, of course, you can be a trash man (but they get icky and dirty and have to touch smelly stuff).

And course we talked of God.

Have you ever seen God?

No, I haven’t seen God.

Why not?

Because you don’t get to see God until you get to Heaven.

What does God look like?

I don’t know because I’ve never seen God.

Is God a man or a woman?

What do you think?

And one morning, apparently having made up her own mind about the previous question: “Mumma, does God have a husband?”

Got me. We’ll ask Pastor Bob.

They were childlike questions that for the most part could be answered with a little thought and a lot of generality.

But then she began to grow up and life threw at her, as it will to everyone, a few curve balls, and the God questions became more difficult.

So it was during a moment of deep grief about an untimely death that she sat on my lap and asked perhaps the most difficult question of all.

“Why did God do this?”

For this, I turned to my own personal expert on God, the Rev. Robert Carlson, pastor of the East Orrington Church.

Carlson has talked to a whole bunch of kids about God and has more experience than he’d probably like talking to kids about death.

While adults often are quick to use God and God’s will as a way to explain difficult and confusing occurrences, Carlson said it’s important that children don’t blame God for the death of a loved one.

God doesn’t control everything, he said. God gives life and God is there “to embrace us” even when that life is over.

“That’s what kids need to understand,” he said. “But they need to know that people get sick and people make decisions that are not necessarily under God’s control.

“Kids are more adaptable than we give them credit for. I think adults often think they have to have all the answers for their kids when actually the kids understand that answers are not always clear and they accept that better than we think,” he said.

Kids also aren’t afraid to come up with their own answers which, of course, is what we as adults have to do when it comes to our faith and our religious beliefs.

Carlson recites a story about a pastor who was watching a young boy draw a picture during Sunday school.

“What are you drawing a picture of?” asked the pastor.

“God,” said the small boy.

Puzzled, the pastor replied, “But no one knows what God looks like.”

The boy paused and glanced up.

“Well, you will when I get finished.”

It bothered me greatly when I realized I couldn’t answer all of my daughter’s questions with unquestionable brilliance. But like in the story, perhaps the best answer of all is to pause and allow them to find the answers themselves.