Teach your Kids Violence: Read them the Old Testament

Last August. We sat out on the porch, basking in the late summer warmth and enjoying a quiet dinner. The coal mine groaned from across the valley but our neighborhood smelled like newly-mown grass. Merry was four.

We had company. Merry, big lovely eyes luminescent in the early twilight, looked up from her plate. "Guess what Elephant did now?" she began. (Elephant is Merry's alter ego in a parallel universe called Cornia.) Our guests listened politely. "He went into the dark dark woods, but then there was a wolf."

Since we are not feeding you dinner, let me make a long, long story short: Elephant defends himself by many means that prove futile. Finally, Elephant cuts off the wolf's head and totes it home triumphantly. Oh, fraptious day! Elephant has slain the wolf! Elephant swings in the door, announcing, "WOLF HEAD for DINNER TONIGHT!" I do believe I've left out other gory details. Needless to say our guests were well entertained and probably concluded we were bad parents who let Merry stay up watching late TV.

But everything Merry ever learned about violence (barring a couple bang-bang-you're-deads from two boys with plastic pistols) she learned from pouring over her children's copy of the Old Testament.

Today at lunch Merry paused in the middle of her peanut-butter and marmalade sandwich. "Mommy?"

Oh, blast. Merry regularly asks things like how a bathtub is built, the existence of Jesus, why did God make mosquitoes. Merry seems to believe I am an endless fount of trivia and general knowledge and her questions are far-ranging, covering more than spirituality and engineering.

"Yes?"

"Mommy, how did that little rock kill Goliath?"

I opened the door to the little storeroom where we keep compost. A musty odor filled my nostrils. Banana peels, coffee grounds. "Well, maybe it was a sharp rock, like a knife."

"But how did David know he would kill Goliath?"

"Well, I guess sometimes you just have to do the right thing even if you don't know whether it will work out or not."

As Elspeth spit out apple peels and flung bread to the ground, I realized my answer was problematic and poor. Maybe you have some good reasons as to why this answer stunk, and I have mine.

First, I hate answering in the same old cliches that parents always are guilty of on Hallmark TV and bad movies.

Second, we are pacifists. I had just told my daughter that an exceedingly violent act was the right thing to do.

Third, the sentence itself was badly constructed. Pauline-like prepositions, run-on, readability--definitely F.

Fourth. Hmmm. Well, depending on what you believe, there's a fourth. I happen to be from the camp of people that believes that most faith "giants" were real, quaking people inside somewhere. Maybe you think David had the faith to know everything would work out in the end. I don't even think Jesus knew for sure when he was about to die that everything would definitely work out. He acted out of obedience and love, not out of knowledge.

But I digress.

Merry ate her sandwich in silence. Was she turning over the inadequacy of my blithe answer?

Instead, she opened her mouth to ask another question. Very probably it was about one of her favorite Bible characters, "Bad-Man-Herod" or Sampson. Instead she said, "That place where Daddy keeps his tractor is a PIG-STY."

Ah, delight in children. Most often Merry is quick to point out my inconsistencies. But here she did not. There are only three things I do not allow into the house: play guns, Barbies (equally if not more harmful in an insidious way), and dirty shoes.

But at Merry's request I read her the Old Testament. Of course stories have conflict and often have heroes and villains and the fight between good and evil. But the difference here is the issue of Merry's spiritual heritage. When reading Merry the Old Testament, I am in a mindset of my Sunday School lessons, blowing my trumpet for the fall of the wall of Jericho; cutting off Goliath's head in glad victory; crushing my enemies with the mighty sword of Jehovah. (Certainly every tender child felt the weight of Jael's hammer as she drove the tent peg through the general's temple--oh, wait. Actually, that story is not in Merry's Bible. Neither Jael or Rahab make it to the pages. But Delilah does, of course. No Bible, not even a children's Bible, could leave out a tasty morsel like Delilah.)

I do not say, as I say every time we talk about violence on the news or in the course of life, "That is a sad way to deal with a problem, isn't it, Merry?" Instead there is the implicit message that Samson was a HERO, tearing down those temple walls and smashing all those people in the ruins. GOOD JOB, Samson!

Then there follows this strange dichotomy I often see in conservative Christian households.
Sex on TV? Superbad. Violence? The more the better!
Feminism? Lies. Subordination of women? God-given right.
Gay marriage? An abomination. War that kills innocent people? Justified.
Money spent on welfare? A waste. Billions on bombs and military? Worth it.

But I didn't mean to get so negative. Count the above as a rant born from the frustration of a person who is tired of the way things are but doesn't know all the answers, either.

Merry's question sparked by a child's Old Testament reminded me of the discomfort I feel with this idea: the divine entitlement to victory for "God's people" through bloodshed. It is a lie that has haunted America since the beginning of our country when the Native Americans were robbed of their land. It is a lie that continues to haunt us now as more innocents die in Iraq. When did we forget that we are all God's people, and all deserving of peace?

Merry sang a song at bedtime today. Imposing my mother's perspective on her song I hope it is about God's Kingdom of peace on earth (whether she knows it or not!):

The seeds have to be spread in gardens
And the plants will sprout and finally bloom
The vision of God's day has bloomed.
God is the bloomer of each day. . .
The most thing that we have to do to please God
Is to be kind to other people
For the God the only Son is in my heart all day and all night.


P.S. More on Arizona is forthcoming, I promise; I'm just waiting for pictures!