He May Take Other Forms
I have yet again been tackling life’s tough questions with one of the little Beasts. On a recent walk home she hit me with,Do you think Jesus was real?
Treading carefully, as I wasn’t sure what line her parents or school had been taking on this, I said that yes, I did believe there had lived a man called Jesus and that there were a lot stories about him and his life in the Bible, blah etc.And then Baby Jesus died and went on the cross, she informed me. And then he went up from the cross and he turned into God.
Go Jesus. Way to make a detour!
Have you been talking about this at school?
Yes. But also I saw him.
Jesus?
Yes.
You saw a picture of him?
No, I saw him in his body.
In a movie?
No, at his home in Jerney.
Jer... Jerusalem?
No, in Jerney.
In... Germany?
Yes! In Ger-man-y. I saw him in Germany. Have you been to Germany with Mummy and Daddy?
She paused for a second, and I swear to you, she said the next two things in the same breath without even taking a beat:
Yes.
And you saw a painting of Jesus, did you? Was it a painting? Or maybe was it in a church, in the coloured glass windows?
No. It was the real man Jesus. I saw the real man Jesus and he looked like your brother. Hey, Jelly, when you were a little girl, did you ever step in poo?
The Jelly Verdict
Hell of a segue.
Sometimes I wonder if religion is too confusing for kids. Maybe they shouldn’t be told anything about it until they’re 18, at which point they can be presented with all the various options and pick whichever one (if any) takes their fancy. At the moment, the kid thinks Jesus is a skinny-ass white boy jazz musician, possibly from Hamburg, who is slightly less interesting than my childhood encounters with dog shit.
Oh, and according to her parents, she’s never been anywhere near Germany. Crazy.
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8 comments:
Did you tell her about when we were kids that we used to have to walk 3 miles through poo to get to school, on account of there being no toilets? And how the now-extinct macro-canines used to leave turds so large you have to tunnel through them to get past?
Kids these days don't know how easy they have got it.
or perhaps she was trying to say that jesus used to play for the band journey.
rowen - yes, we lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank!
ecamirg - you know, I was SO CLOSE to making that joke in my post! *high fives dorkily*
Religion was confusing for me as a kid, but mainly because my aunt kept trying to make me into a good little Catholic boy, and my parents didn't really tell me much about it. Good thing my aunt didn't really screw me up, I guess.
It is so difficult to teach a child what to believe when your not sure what to believe in yourself - I usually offer "some people believe in A..." and some people belive "B" if I get called on it I sit on the fence. I much prefer to answer those questions about have you ever or when you were little?
Some dumbass kid asked me a similar question once. I said it didn't matter what you believed in as long as you were a decent person. God forbid the god squad parents ever find out about that speech...
My theory is that she thought she was in Germany, it was Jersey. And Jesus was the guy that mowed the grass. (I know, it's a bad joke, but it was all I had.)
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"Hey, Jelly, when you were a little girl, did you ever step in poo?"
Gold, gold, gold! I respect anyone who has developed an appreciation for poo chitchat from an early age.
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