Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Discussing God with a 4-year-old

Gavin has so many questions about God right now and sometimes his questions stump me.  The reason I find his questions difficult is that my answers do not always satisfy him.  For example, today in the car he asked me if there was one God or a lot of gods.  I told him there was one. He then asked me if God was in my heart.  I said, "yes," and then I asked him the same.  He said, "No."  I asked him why he said that, and he had a logical answer for a four-year-old: "Because if God's in your heart, he can't be in mine because he can't be in two places at the same time."

I then tried to explain how God is everywhere and with us all, but his four-year-old brain could not understand my explanation.  In his mind, no one can be in two places at the same time, and I totally get where he's coming from.  He kept telling me that I was wrong, and that he was right.  He told me over and over again that there are lots of gods.  I even got my mom on the phone to tell him that God is huge and is everywhere with us.  I don't know that we ever completely resolved the issue at hand...

I told Brady about our conversation to prepare him in case Gavin came to him about it.  We do not agree on religion these days, but thankfully he has agreed to answer that there's one God who's great enough to be with all of us.  His initial response was, "Well that depends on your belief system."  Yeah, that's not exactly what I'd say to our four-year-old!

On the positive side, I love that Gavin is talking about God with us.  I want him to grow up knowing God's love and feeling comfortable talking about Him with us.

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