Kids

There is a metaphor that has been developing for the past 3 and a half years in my life. It is having children. I remember clearly the weeks following the birth of my first daughter Makenna. The thought swept over me continually that God's love was similar in some ways to my love for my daughter. Though she was small and helpless, I saw infinite value and worth in her. And I loved her long before she could love me. Those are things I have heard before, being raised in the church. Yeah yeah, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But having a daughter took that truth from my head to my heart.
In more recent days, there have been other ways God has spoken to me through my children. Such as the fact that as I write this, my 3 year old is begging me to do something fun. So I must take a break. Bye!
Ok, so where was I...
There is something our parents tell us when we are growing up, although no kid likes hearing it. "I just want what is best for you." That is of course the reason for missing out on so much fun. But as a parent you sincerely want your kids to understand what you mean - why sometimes they cannot have what they want, something very good in itself. Like cake. Or seeing a friend. Or having a snack. Or why they cannot have something that is in fact inately harmful, although they cannot understand that either.
I was thinking this week that life is so much about our perspective. A toddler has the perspective that they are the only really important person in the world. A teenager, having moved through a few phases of life, develops an idea that although they are not the only person that matters, they are the only person with a clue. Their parents are outdated and unfair. Then, you become a parent. And you realize that in each stage of life, we lack the true perspective on our own life, although it is easy to have a proper perspective on, say, my little brother's life.
As our character matures - if it does and is - then the only proper perspective to have is one of humility regarding our own life. We realize with each step, as I am realizing in my life, how little we know, and how much we do not.
So that leads me to wondering if I am paralleling my children's immaturity, but in more subtle ways. I wonder if, as God leads me through different challenges, and calls me to new things, I am acting like a child, resisting His efforts to bless and grow me.
My littlest daughter is 1. She has begun to assert herself very strongly when she wants something. We insist that she uses her limited words or signs to "ask" for something, rather than screaming for it. It is easy to see that such a habit and skill - that is, graciously and humbly relating to others - will serve her well in life. More than that, she will learn to be gracious to us and to God, and view everything as a gift, nothing deserved. But she cannot possibly understand all of what it means to ask politely, or to say thank you. Those are still a means to an end.
I wonder if, in my tough situations, whether God would rather have me seek to hone my own attitude and character than look to fix the problem. Not that the problem is good in itself, but it will be truly of no good if I cannot adopt God's perspective on it in the process. So, it is not that my daughter should not have food when she is hungry, but that if in her hunger she never learns to be gracious in the asking and recieving, the food will only feed her body, not her soul.
"Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?" Matthew 6:25

Sincerely Damned

This week I read through a wonderful little book by C.S. Lewis called "The Great Divorce". If you have not read it, you need to. It is hard to adequately describe how much I loved reading it, or how much I gained, and am still gaining, from having read it. Lewis has the uncanny gift for expressing spiritual truths profoundly and plainly, either through fiction or allegory or arguments.
The book deals with the nature of good and evil, and especially Heaven and Hell. Lewis propagates, through a story, that those who end up in Hell in fact choose it. God gives them what they want. And likewise, those that want Himself, He gives them Heaven. He explores several major ways and reasons people reject Heaven for Hell.
In Chapter 4 he addresses something I have often wondered about - what about those people who sincerely seek the truth, but simply end up at the wrong conclusion? What is to become of those who reject the Christian faith out of an honest and critical investigation of the facts and arguments?
Says a man in Heaven to a man from Hell:
"Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man's mind. If that's what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent."