2002 CONFESSIONS
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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

JANUARY 2002 CONFESSIONS

CHILD QUESTIONS

My parents kept a marvelous record of my youth through regular journal entries (a practice I have so far failed to emulate with my own children). Back in the 70s, when Carl Sagan was piloting his star ship through the PBS series Cosmos, he made a reference to humanity as "star stuff." To which I, all of seven years old, responded, "We're not star stuff. We are God stuff." Very sweet and precocious I was.

My own son is four now, and his religious thoughts are more probing than mine were. My wife was out with the kids. A long silence from the backseat was broken by this question: "Why do I do bad things that I don't want to do?" And there was my wife, smack dab at the heart of the Christian faith we promised to pass on to our children -- fallen man in need of redemption.

How would I have answered? I have imagined myself telling the boy the story of Adam and Eve, feeling just a tad silly as I did so. "Talking snakes!" He would be fascinated and triumphant -- I'm always telling him that animals can't really talk the way they do in cartoons. (If they could, meat really would be murder.) I have imagined telling him that, just as he has inherited certain facial features from me, he has inherited a vitiated nature from his first father, one which tends toward naughtiness and is susceptible to temptation.

My son is quick. From my teaching that God made everything and that everything exists only because God wants it to, he jumped to the idea that God makes him do bad things. (This comes partly from the fact that when he misbehaves, I often ask him why he has done what he has done. I want him to understand himself, but his interests are more remote.) No, I counter, God is good and does not make anyone do anything that is not good. Temptations toward evil are from the Devil. "Then the Devil made me do it!" No, the Devil can only tempt you. "Then my temptations made me do it!" No, you can resist your temptations. Ask God for help. (More trouble -- he prays and still fails. Why?) "Why does God give me temptations?" He is angry now, red-faced and throwing himself on his bed. "Stop giving me temptations, God!" He senses that God remains the ultimate source of things, and he is on to something. God does test us.

Why does God give temptations? To prove man, like gold that is tested in fire. But why did God give that first temptation, the one that lured Lucifer to fall? Did God give that temptation? He made everything that is, and He is goodness itself, so everything that is must be good. Evil, says St. Augustine, comes from a "deficient cause," a sort of hole in being. But how can not-being be? The common answer to the question, "Why is there evil?" is "Because there is free will." But whence came the desire to turn that will from the face of the Almighty? What greater good presented itself? Lucifer's intellect was not darkened as ours is; he looked God in the face. His will was not damaged at his creation; he was God's favorite. Lucifer is the curious case, because he is the source of man's first temptation. But what tempted Lucifer? My boy likes to go to the root cause of things; what to say when he gets to this question?

My son likes the idea that there will be no more temptations in heaven, but otherwise, he doesn't want to go. He cannot imagine happiness away from home, from the house we live in now. He keeps asking, "But will we get to come back to this house?" The house is crucial for him. A few days ago, he announced with obvious pleasure that he didn't need to go to heaven, because he had God in the house -- "He's hanging on the cross on the wall." This despite numerous explanations that Jesus is no longer on the cross, that we have the crucifix in the house to remind us of how much He loved us.

I pull my mother's old trick -- "If you want to come to the house when you're in heaven, you will." This is true in one way -- our heart's desires will be met in heaven -- though it seems doubtful that once he sees God as He is, he will still ardently desire life in this house. But he is not satisfied with my answer; he senses the fudging. Nor is he satisfied with the truth, that maybe heaven will be so wonderful that he won't want to come back here.

My son says his prayers at night and grace before meals. He likes the stories in the Catholic Treasure Box about little Thérèse offering gifts for God. He likes our Advent Chain and the prayers it enjoins. He says a Hail Mary when he sees an ambulance. He asks about God all the time -- His size, what He can and cannot do, how He can know everything. I am trying to keep up.

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