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'God, This World Is Neet!': What Kids Want God to Know
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10365 |
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Section : |
Life
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| Issue
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12 / 1986 |
3,227 Words |
| Author
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Ronda Miller
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Over 250 Children in three Southern California parochial schools decided to give God a collective piece of their mind.
The fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students of La Sierra Elementary and St. Catherine of Alexandria schools in Riverside, and vacation Bible classes at Irvine's Good Shepherd Lutheran Church were posed with the questions "What would you like to ask God?" and "What would you like to tell God?" during a short class assignment.
Pink-cheeked and perspiring after handball and jump rope, young scholars removed wads of bubblicious and stashed their latest pack of Garbage Pail Kids cards before dragging out paper and grubby pencils. And let God have it with candid, sometimes profound commentary on his world and work.
Scoring an interview with the Almighty was as conceivable as getting a decent grade in math by the end of the school year.
Students averaged between the ages of nine and twelve, but their answers bespeak a startling maturity and concern usually achieved in adulthood.
Students were encouraged to imagine God engaging them in personal conversation. Public school children were unable to participate in this assignment, because their teachers are forbidden from introducing the concept of God in their classrooms.
An overwhelming majority of the children participating in this assignment are just plain, middle-class American kids with common fears and common hopes. More than a handful of apparently disgruntled young scholars demanded to know why God bothered to create bees, flies, pollution, crime, and girls (this segment was primarily comprised of ten-year-old boys).
Inquisitive minds penned, "God, when is Your birthday?" "What do we get to eat in heaven?" and "How come cats can have lots of babies but my mother only had one?"
More than half of the children asked God to provide a travelogue on heaven. Penning her conception of paradise, one shining-eyed child described "silver roads, manshens and everything!"
Youngsters from the kindergarten class of Good Shepherd Lutheran church were unexpectedly quiet when asked what they would like to tell God. Fresh from their "God is Love" basic training, the tiny five-year-olds seemed speechless at the thought that the Almighty could actually be drawn into casual conversation.
Other Good Shepherd vacation Bible students were considerably older, more assured, and sophisticated during their hypothetical one-on-one with God.
"God," asked seven and a half-year-old Katie, "How can anybody love a person more than a dog?"
Arron asked, "How did You make the world?" He added, "Your gardens are beautiful." Like many of his five-year-old peers, Devon just wanted to say "Thank You."
"Do you use magic?" asked
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