Written July 2013
Our breakfast discussions do not always include religion and politics together, but today it did!
It's amazing to me how discussions come up with children and then where they lead to! This morning started out as any other typical summer morning. As the girls were eating breakfast, I started preparing them about our school starting next week and all of us getting back into our school routine.
This talk prompted Anna to ask me "Is school going to start after this night-night time?" This is her way of asking, "tomorrow?" Aubrey quickly piped in and said that we had to go to Power Surge first at the church on Friday night. The girls have been attending "Power-up" clubs this week with a local church. This is their version of VBS. I like the idea of having a lot of small local house group meetings for children during the summer instead of one huge time-consuming VBS. But I agree with it to the extent that the purpose is to disciple and teach the word or God. Not to play fun games the whole time and then insert a small bible story that doesn't include the true gospel. Now, the girls are all hyped up about the finale night, which is more like a huge fair of jumpies, slides, fair-type games and food. I'm all for a good time, but let's call it what it is...a fair that is being held at a church.
The discussion went to me explaining to Aubrey my thoughts and feelings on this. When we go to church, it is with the desire to want to be with the body of Christ, to worship Him, to learn God's Word and be discipled. I'm quite sure that when the first churches were formed in the New Testament, it was not with the intent to provide fun and games for children.
It's important to us that our girls understand the true purpose of Church. It's all about JESUS! It's not about providing fun, games and entertainment for children.
So...that lead into a discussion of me asking Aubrey what she's learned this week at the Power-up clubs and specifically, had sin even been mentioned. She said that it had, but couldn't remember what was specifically said about sin.
Somehow the discussion shifted to her making a comment about believing in Jesus and going to heaven. I can't even remember specifically how she said it.
As her mom, it is my huge responsibility to teach her God's truth. It's my daily prayer that I teach my girls God's way in a truthful manner. I've learned in the last few years how it is so easy to apply your own applications to God's word and many times that is taking God's word completely out of context...which is then teaching them falsely.
So we open up the bible to Matthew 8:28 and the discussion moves to how even the demons believed in Jesus and His powers, but that doesn't mean that were saved and going to heaven. In fact, the demons were so aware of who Jesus was that they immediately called Him, Son of God! They were also aware of His powers to "torment them before their time." In other words, to torment them before He sent them to hell.
I also read to Aubrey, how the townspeople asked Jesus to leave their region. They believed who He was. They were fully aware of the demons in the two men before and they now saw that Jesus had the power to cast out those demons. They also saw that the souls of those two men cost them their herd of pigs; their livelihood. They put more value into their herd that they had just lost, than the souls of those two men and the sacrifice of following Jesus. They were content with their lives and didn't want Jesus to disrupt it.
As is most of the time typical with Aubrey (maybe it's with every 7 year old), Aubrey then says that she knows the cycle of money. The talk of the townspeople losing their livelihood or way of making money triggered this thought in her. Her thoughts of the cycle was Mr. Ashley pays Daddy → Daddy gives me the money → I take the money and buy groceries →the grocery store then takes the money and gives it to the military to feed the men and women who protect us. I love the fact that she's thinking it through, so I let the discussion keep progressing in this direction.
However, I explain the cycle of money this way: Daddy buys and sales houses for Mr. Ashley →the new homeowners pay Mr. Ashley for their new house → Mr. Ashley pays Daddy for the work he did in selling and building the house → daddy gives me the money to go buy groceries → the grocery store then uses the money to buy more meat for their store from a butcher → the butcher then goes and buys more pigs from a farmer → the farmer used the money to build a new house (with Mr. Ashley and Daddy, of course).
Aubrey's next logical question, "What about the military?" Oh boy. Let me explain taxes! You know that money that Daddy earned form selling and building that house, well, he doesn't really get all of it. By law, Mr. Ashley has to take some of the money that Daddy earned and give it to the government. The government then uses that money to pay for the military which protects out country. I explained how that's a good thing and our taxes should go towards the military, but they I took it a little further and told her how everyone pays taxes. This means that the government collects A LOT of money from the people of this country. It then takes the power of giving that money to whomever they please even when it's an organization or person that we may not want to get our money.
I may have gone off a little bit of a tangent at this point explaining to Aubrey how some people started realizing that they could just get money from the government to buy their cars, groceries and really anything they needed without having to work at all. This has made them lazy and now they are dependent on the government (and us) to continue providing everything for them while they don't really try that hard (if at all) to try and provide for themselves.
Aubrey's next logical question, "Can I turn on the TV now?" YES! But only for a couple more days and then we will be getting back into our school routine.
I feel like I just wrote a version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!
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