Saturday, August 16, 2008

My Daughter the Theologian

The longer I practice my vocation as father, the more I realize that the teaching of some bodies of an age of accountability is complete and utter nonsense. Let me give you an example. Tonight I was trying to put the Terrible Toddler Twins (tm) to sleep. For some reason it took more milk than usual to put them out, so I had to warm up some more. Since Michael will scream and cry if we leave him in the room without us at night, I had to carry him with me. That left Molly alone in the room. While I was making the milk--no cow or cud jokes, please--Molly hid the remote. Now, she knows that she's not supposed to do that. How do I know she knows? She said to me, "Daddy, where's the 'mote?" I reached to where I'd left it, and it wasn't there. I said, "I don't know, Molly. Where's the remote?" She looked me straight in the eye and said, "I don't know, Daddy." And then she hid. (As in, "We realized we were naked, so we hid.")

You can't tell me that Molly didn't know it was wrong to hide the remote. And you can't tell me that she wasn't covering up something she knew was wrong by first playing ingenuousness and then by lying to me about it. She's not yet three, but she knows.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. The Word should be enough; but if it's not, just ask my daughter. She knows.

1 comment:

Orianna Laun said...

If you don't believe in original sin, hang out in kindergarten--better yet, preschool. Today it was a defiant five-year-old whose whole argument for everything was one loud, piercing wail.