I’m sure every mom says this, but my four-year-old is really smart. Okay, he keeps running into doors and things, but… in other ways, he’s extremely intuitive and sensitive. Either way, I enjoy talking to him. He keeps me on my toes.
We were in the car, headed home from our weekly excursion to the grocery store, when Donovan said, completely unprovoked,
“God made some mistakes when he made bad guys, but that’s okay.”
One of the ethical failings of his superhero obsession, perhaps, is this black and white thinking. Oh well, I’m not one of those parents to limit his interests. I responded,
“No, buddy, God doesn’t make mistakes. People make mistakes. People are born as is, and then they choose to be good or bad.” I cringed, thinking about the finality of those labels in simplistic preschool understanding of morals, then added: “People make good decisions and bad decisions. You can always change and be good. Jesus loves everyone anyway.”
The car was silent for a moment before Donovan responded.
“Jesus loves everyone? Even bad guys?!”
“Yup. Even bad guys.”
“That’s just CRAZY!” he exclaimed.
“That’s what makes him Jesus,” I said, drifting my car into the next lane a little too early, wondering immediately what sort of drastic effects this conversation might be having on my child.
“Wow,” said Donovan, stunned.
I’ve written before about radical love for bad people, but of course, I try to portray it as something that adults would grasp. A wonderful, kindly progressive view with perfect lens of perfect theology. It’s much, much harder to explain these concepts to a child, especially one as impressionable and deep as Donovan.
What I want to do is explain to Donovan that maybe bad people aren’t “bad,” they had bad experiences along the way and no one ever taught them how to react the right way. That maybe they have some sort of mental illness that was untreated, or a vengeful spirit to ease some burden of pain. On the other hand, what is his perception of “good?” Someone who stops crime? He really, really likes policemen and firemen. I have never corrected him because I want him to know these are good people that he should turn to if he needs help. But I wonder what he would think if he understood the news in Baltimore. I told him police are as close as it gets to real life superheroes and he loved that sentiment. Those narratives of good cops stopping bad criminals are more common than the reverse. It doesn’t take away the other reality of complicated issues and racism and law enforcement, which certainly do exist. Life is so much more painful than that. I know that. But he doesn’t.
Before I had kids, I had a vision of how I would raise them and what I would teach them and how we would do things differently. I’m pretty proud of myself for some of the things I’ve managed so far in my parenting, but I’m always falling short of perfection, and I always will. I can’t help but wonder if the effects of superhero morals will linger – and if they do, is that a bad thing?
Ultimately, kids do think in black and white. And I want him to think on the “good” side, at least for now. The typical Superman style of morals. Because I know it won’t last forever and the grey will come seeping in.
With the one addendum: yes, Jesus loves the bad guys too. They were not mistakes.
And that IS crazy. The whole Jesus thing is crazy overall, really. But I like crazy.
jennifercmartin 