Their Resistance Starts Young

My wife is a second grade teacher. The other day, she was teaching a cause and effect lesson to the little ones. You flip the light switch and what happens? They all grasped that example.

But why is there snow on the top of the mountain? They were baffled, and a hush fell over the class. Finally one little boy spoke up. “God put it there.” My wife responded with something along the lines of “That may be true, but we don’t study God in school” and then continued to explain cause (high elevation) and effect (snow doesn’t melt).

The little kid looked at her like she’d run over his puppy.

Amazing isn’t it? Here’s a second grader who deftly asks about a theology of nature. True, the phrase theology of nature won’t be in his vocabulary for many years to come, but he’s hit upon the subject nonetheless. And he’s quite unhappy that his answer — God did it — wasn’t accepted. I can only speculate that it’s an answer that’s worked very well for him in his prior experiences with adults.

I don’t know the little boy, his parents, or the family’s religious background. But it seems that the kid has already learned the false dichotomy. Either God put snow on the mountain, or He didn’t. Explain the snow by other means, and you’re attacking his belief system.

I find it sad but interesting because it seems to parallel the thinking of many adult Christians. They resist natural explanations for natural things because to them, it removes any room for God. (I’ve commented before on the irony that Creationists are in effect agreeing with atheists on this matter).

What would happen if we lived in a world where the little boy learned both at home and in his culture that the two beliefs do not have to be contradictory? That mountains, snow, and high elevation can yield their own secrets, but that one can, if one wishes, believe in a deeper underlying meaning to the world and people around us.

It seems to me that by the time our children added theology of nature to their vocabularies, they would be well on their way to having one.