Feb 16, 2015 | trust
No. God keeps loving you the same whether you make a wrong choice or a right one.*
But God often provides a consequence.
It might come through your teacher, or from your conscience and you feel miserable the rest of the day, maybe have trouble sleeping that night.
God loves you but God is not pleased with hateful, lying, mean behavior.
Consequences are an important way God expresses love to you.
Sometimes consequences from bad behavior leave you feeling guilty, embarrassed or mad.- You might lose a friend.
- Occasionally you have to find jobs to do in order to earn money to pay for damage done.
- Your family can start to doubt you and act suspicious of you for a long time when your words or actions break their trust.
God hopes you will choose wisely next time because he wants a good life for you, a life of love.
God is for you, not against you. He knows that a good life comes when you live by God’s rules.
Consequences from good behavior give you a happy feeling.
Often you feel that God is pleased with you and proud of you. In fact, one great way to let God know you love him — follow his rules of life.
Many people say that he had people write them down and put them in a book. Different religions have different books: The Torah, The Bible, The Koran. For the most part, these different books will have similar teachings about right and wrong — no lying, stealing or killing. And treat others the way you want to be treated.
You might have a book like this at your house.
For sure you can find one on the computer. Ask an adult you trust. They may have a children’s version of the book and they can help you find some of those rules.
Tweetable: Consequences, not punishment, is how many people prefer to explain God’s response to wrongdoing. Click to Tweet
Feb 9, 2015 | Security
Sifu Ed Monaghan, martial artist and UCLA Professor, had been talking about the value of meditation to his class of 13-16 year olds at Ekata Training Center.
I asked the kids, “Have you ever seen anyone on a boat when it’s windy?” All had seen boats rocking on the water. I asked, “Can you see things on the surface of the ocean – like boats, oil rigs, birds, etc.?” They replied in the affirmative.
Then I asked if they ever saw “Shark Week” on TV? Most of them had. I said, “Is there a lot of life and action under water that we can’t see from the surface?” Again they agreed.
I said, “The ocean is like our minds. The waves are like our thoughts jostling us around. We see and are very concerned with the stuff that we can see on the surface, but there is so much more underneath. When we meditate, we learn to calm the waves and look below the surface. Our mind is like a drop of water, and the ocean is like universal consciousness. Our mind is a part of that consciousness just like the drop of water is a part of the ocean. They are inseparable. But we need meditation to help us see beyond the surface.”
Eastern tradition unites with Western tradition in understanding that there is inner life below the surface of what we see with our physical eyes.
Children seek a firm footing in this inner life and they enter into it differently.
- One 6-year-old girl says, “Mindfulness has been my favorite thing in my whole life…when I’m mad, sad or frustrated.”
- A man told me that he remembers weeding in his front yard and talking to Jesus: “I’ve heard about you–that you’re good–and I want you to be part of my life.”
- Thinking back on her childhood, a woman states, “I always had a clear sense that God is there. Sometimes he seemed distant or like he doesn’t like me, but I’ve always felt that he was there watching.”
When we notice signs of their interest, and enter their world with them, most children are grateful for our attention to their inner life.
Tweetable: An idea for how to discuss the personal yet universal colors and shadings of a child’s inner life? Click to Tweet
Jan 20, 2015 | Attachment
Different aspects of God’s character are going to attract one child more than another.
A child who likes routine
With a child who does not like change, who likes routine, and who references the past for clues about what to do in the present, God’s unchanging nature (the same today as he has always been) draws that child close.
So if your child worries about things, you can reassure him that the problem he has now is something God has seen before, and what you know of God in the past is what you can expect to see in the future.
A high energy child
Another child is high energy, curious, and all about action and excitement. If you focus with this kid on God being the same today as he has always been, he doesn’t get excited–how boring!—and does not connect strongly with this part of God’s character.
To this child you talk about God being the most adventurous person they’ve ever seen, how God is right there with them when they are taking risks, doing brave and exciting things. Don’t expect them to relate with a God who is boring or who has lists of rules.
While another child wants to do what’s right and needs structure, rules make this action-seeker want to rebel. Rules? I want to be outside the box, to push the limits, to test the boundaries.
A better approach is to emphasize how difficult it is to do the right thing. When you stand out from the crowd for doing what is right or just or good, you are very brave.
We give children a complete picture of what God is like….but
We think through which characteristics are going to click with each one. If this is overlooked, God can seem foreign to them, and makes it more difficult for them to find the connecting points they seek.
Tweetable
When a child asks about God, here’s an idea for matching their personality to God’s characteristics. Click to Tweet
Nov 24, 2014 | Nourishment
We didn’t say grace at our house when I was growing up because my parents were atheists, explains author Anne Lamott.
I knew even as a little girl that everyone at every table needed blessing and encouragement, but my family didn’t ask for it. Instead, my parents raised glasses of wine to the chef: Cheers. Dig in.
But I had a terrible secret
which was that I believed in God, a divine presence who heard me when I prayed, who stayed close to me in the dark. So at 6 years of age I began to infiltrate religious families like a spy—Mata Hari in [pink] sneakers.
One of my best friends was a Catholic girl
Her boisterous family bowed its collective head and said, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts…” I was so hungry for these words; it was like a cool breeze, a polite thank-you note to God, the silky magnetic energy of gratitude. I still love that line.”
My two brothers and I all grew up to be middle-aged believers
I’ve been a member of the same Presbyterian church for 27 years. My older brother became a born-again Christian–but don’t ask him to give the blessing [at a holiday dinner], as it can last forever. I adore him, but your food will grow cold. My younger brother is an unconfirmed but freelance Catholic.
So now someone at our holiday tables always ends up saying grace
We say thank you for the miracle that we have stuck together all these years, in spite of it all; that we have each other’s backs, and hilarious companionship.
We savor these moments out of time, when we are conscious of love’s presence, of Someone’s great abiding generosity to our dear and motley family, these holy moments of gratitude. And that is grace.
Excerpts are taken from a column, “Views by Anne Lamott,” November 11, 2012. View entire column here.
Tweetable: Will you say grace at your holiday feast? Find inspiration through the eyes of a 6-year-old girl. Click to Tweet
Nov 10, 2014 | Nourishment
Talk to any 3- or 4-year-old and you will find a capacity to think about God. Researcher Justin Barrett says, “They already have something like an impulse to think about supernatural beings, to account for why things are the way they are and how things work in the world around them. They’re really inclined to make sense of it in terms of something like God.”
Cultivate that natural capacity as they get older.
So how does that work? How can parents, or any adult who’s caring for a child’s spiritual well-being, encourage engaging with the mind of God? Dr. Barrett continues:
You can ask them to consider: How does God think?
How might that be different from how they think? What is God’s perspective on their life, on the lives of those around them? This kind of engagement might be good for their personal development but it’s also great for their social, cognitive development.
Children’s social intelligence increases as they consider these kinds of questions.
There is evidence that thinking about others who have different perspectives is good for developing children’s social intelligence:
- others who look at things a different way
- others who feel something differently
- others who know different things
It helps them develop the ability to navigate the world around them
It builds up those muscles for thinking about other people who have different perspectives, and maybe loosen up the erroneous idea that I am the center of the world. How I think is the way everyone else thinks. What I think is right and wrong is what everybody else thinks is right and wrong.
God is a really interesting test case for that possibility.
Thinking about God, engaging with God, and considering the difference between God and them can help stretch a child. It can bring the understanding that I could be wrong about certain things because God captures the truth better than I do.
It is healthy for children from a very young age to begin engaging with how God thinks.
This post is composed of excerpts taken from a magazine interview given by Dr. Justin Barrett.
Tweetable: Children are really inclined to make sense of the world in terms of something like God. Click to Tweet
