This is a question I understand all too well. The fact is, I was one of those children. My mother was Irish Roman Catholic. My father was Presbyterian. Whose God was really the True God?
It was not an easy arrangement in a religious world where ‘we,’ whoever that was, were right and ‘they,’ whoever we named as “other,” were wrong.
Like even greater numbers of children today, I was the child in-between it all, trying to figure out how it was that God–all merciful, all loving--the God, whom the catechism assured me, had made everyone, loved some of us more than the rest of us.
And why? Because we all went to different places to worship that same God in different ways. What was even worse, I finally came to understand, was that most people had never even heard of our church at all. So how could they be there?
Very confusing, if you’re a child. Very confusing if you’re an adult. And very hard on God, as well. After all, what kind of a God is it who creates people just to condemn them for not being what they do not even know about.
Clearly, the problem is not that the mind of a child is unable to grasp the notion of a God who loves everyone. In fact, “Unless you be as little children,” Jesus says, “you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” No, the problem lies in the mind of adults who want to own everything. Even God.
But God is no one’s race, no one’s flag, no one’s color. And those who say so make God very puny, indeed.
So the answer is so profound it’s simple–which is why children will understand it even if many adults do not.
The answer is that there is only one God and that God made everyone, loves everyone. Because we are all different, however, God speaks to us in many tongues.
In the end, we are all on our way back to God. But everyone goes to God differently, in their own way--in the ways they have learned to find God and hear God and see God and love God best.
In the end, it will be only that love that counts. Not the tradition, not the denomination, not the language in which we set out to live that love.
No doubt about it: The love of God any child will understand easily. Exclusion, on the other hand, they may have difficulty accepting.
Now if we could only get adults to understand the same thing.
Please e-mail On Faith if you'd like to receive an email notification when On Faith sends out a new question.
Email Me | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
