“Mommy, why did Jesus have to die? I wish he was still alive.”
And so it begins…
You know what? Jesus wants us to love other people and to be kind. If you do those two things, it’s like Jesus never died. Like he’s still here. Because you’re doing the things he did in the world.
I don’t know where that came from. From Jesus, I guess. Because sometimes I do hear him talking to me. Like suddenly there’s the utmost clarity and time stops and my mouth opens and the right words tumble out. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I don’t care that #RockStarDad is into Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, I don’t care if the fundamentalists have taken over the Baptist brand, and I don’t care what’s actually written in The Bible. Because it’s there inside my heart for no one to steal.
During that moment with my 5-year-old, I glimpsed the whole point of Christianity. You can throw out the doctrine and the virgin birth and the resurrection and the water into wine, and grasp the only reason we’re here: to love other people and to be kind.
It’s that simple. It’s the glue holding society together.
Translating the crucifixion
Last year he asked me how they killed Jesus. I’m pretty immune to that story, so I told him the truth: they took nails and hammered them through the middle of Jesus’ hands and feet to hang him on a cross.
It was the wrong thing to say. A 4-year-old doesn’t (shouldn’t) know violence for violence sake. But when he was 3, he came home from daycare reciting the Easter story through the words of his “friend” Hank: “And then they put stickers on his head and THE BLOOD came pouring down.” A bit dramatic, I thought. Surely he can handle some nails.
Not quite. And that made the story new again for me. I watched his eyes cloud with horror and tears and he balled his own hands up into tiny little, protective fists and he crouched into a ball to recoil from the image I’d handed him.
I didn’t backtrack. The information was already out there between us. Instead, I gathered my senses and hugged him. I don’t remember what I said after that. I’d like to imagine it was something, like, “Wasn’t that terrible and sad? I don’t know why some people are mean and hurt other people.” No way was I going with the “it was God’s plan” line – what does that even mean anyway? God’s heart had to hurt, too.
Weeks later he asked, “Mommy, how can a person be in my heart? It’s small!” I didn’t know what he was talking about. This happens a lot and this extroverted momma has learned to wait a minute or two before responding. Because sometimes he’ll answer the question himself, or he’ll offer me more clues about what he needs.
Oh, you’re talking about Jesus! Yes, um, well, listen for a minute…Do you hear words inside your head? That’s called your soul. When you die, your body stays on earth and gets buried, but your soul goes to heaven. And Jesus’ soul kinda floats around and is inside everyone’s heart telling us how to love other people. His soul is just the right size for your heart.
Which is a weird concept. Which meant the other day when we drove by a cemetery, he asked, “How do they cut off all the heads?” Um, what? Pause and wait…Oh, you’re talking about the whole soul in your head/body in the ground thing. Let’s revisit.
Spiritual crisis
His daddy worries about sweet boy’s spiritual journey, that he’ll have a crisis of faith one day and that it’ll devastate him.
I keep saying: you can’t keep someone from having a spiritual crisis, it’s called life. Something is going to blow up his faith and all I can do is hope he remembers the bare minimum that’s really the most crucial. That his job is to love other people and to be kind. Everything else is worthy of being blown up.
Meanwhile, his little brother may not have a spiritual journey at all. I typically find him lying on the floor with his arms stretched out, announcing, “Look, I’m playing ‘Jesus died on the cross.’ Go get a hammer.”
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Photo credit: Ben White from Unsplash.com