I have a child in the fourth grade. He is pensive and silent when I pick him up from school, simultaneously deep in thought and happy to be free. His feet are long and stretching longer. His teeth are half tiny, half huge in his mouth. In his face I can see equally his smiles and coos as an infant and his future countenance as a man. His mind, independent of my own, is grasping new concepts and holding them in court, judging right and wrong based on what he’s already been told.
Fourth grade feels like the beginning of middle childhood, when self-awareness blooms alongside great possibilities and doubt. I remember certain feelings in the fourth grade. In particular, I remember certain conversations with a fellow fourth grader who enlightened me on new vocabulary since I wasn’t in love with any of the boys in my class.
“Well,” she said, “you’re a lesbian, then. A gaywod.” She laughed and I laughed along with her, because she was ten and clever and I wished I had half her confidence. We were friends but I was certainly the shorter end of the stick. I’m not sure why she had befriended me in the first place. I never offered more than pure awe at her maturity–something she, no doubt, took as a huge compliment. If she were making fun of me, it still felt like a pretty cool insult. I put it in my back pocket to retrieve at an opportune time.
My parents weren’t so impressed when I repeated gaywod at home to my brothers.
When I returned to my friend and finally had the nerve to ask her to explain the vocabulary to me (proof that if kids don’t get their questions answered at home, they will find out elsewhere) I had to stop and consider. Who was I? Did I like girls or boys? Was it even up to me? What a heavy question for a fourth grader, for the beginning of growing up years, the crisis of identity.
What is truth? I wondered, and what is mine?
Jesus, before he was hanged on a cross, found himself dragged before the Roman governor, who asked this very question. What is truth? The man, Pilate, surely uttered these words with rhetorical contempt. Jesus had just made his last statement before he was beaten, before the crown of thorns was pressed onto his head, before they mocked the king of creation.
“..the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone this side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37)
Pilate was astonished–here was a man with a chance to defend himself (he had done nothing wrong, after all) and all he did was defend Truth…whatever that was.
To the discerning, this is propaganda. So, in fact, was the life of Jesus. But isn’t every word ever uttered, every life lived, an airing of opinion? The choice is yours, we all pick a master.
Propaganda, perhaps, but Jesus was all I knew as a child. I knew He was right and perfect because no one ever caught him in a lie. He was humble and he didn’t give a rip about what people thought. He was the way, the truth, and the life, and even as a kid this never failed me. He was rogue, he was right, and I knew Him. Because of this, I knew who I was created to be, even when introspective questions started popping up in the fourth grade. In my deepest parts–even when I couldn’t put a finger on the why–I knew there was only one way the Father, whether I liked it or not. Whether I agreed or not. Whether I ran away or stayed. Whether I liked boys or girls.
My parents wisely stopped letting me spend the night at my friend’s house. They pulled me away from her influence without me detecting too much insensitivity on their part. They didn’t sit me down and explain heavy matters, they just set up some safer boundaries to contain my curiosity. They faithfully kept walking in the light and leading us kids in the same direction.
I am so thankful. So, so, so thankful. Because I wanted attention and I would’ve looked for it anywhere. I did, for a little bit, before I was drawn back into His arms. But without my parents there would be no internal compass, no installation of Scripture in my head and heart to bring me home. The wandering would’ve been heartbreaking. Not all who wander are lost, but many who wander are in deep, deep woods.
Imagine, as a child, the hunger to be known by another person. Attention. It is no different than how some people hunger for money, success, power. While we live in these bodies of flesh it is so easy to justify our wants as our needs, simply because it feels like hunger. And when our bodies say we are hungry, we eat. We can rationalize any number of habits and persuasions, but as we lack restraint they quickly turn into unhealthy cravings and addictions. Our Creator knew we would get hungry, but he also offered us a compass to guide us.
Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Proverbs 3:3
My faithful parents put this compass in my hands, the hidden Word in my heart. Without this compass, I’d be lost.
And today many are wandering, lost. They have no compass, they have no moral weathervane pointing left, right, up or down. Maybe they’ve only ever been around people sneering, “Truth? What is truth?” They send out questions into a void universe that only echoes back its own emptiness. They are the most susceptible, the kind that need rescuing from the darkest of dark places.
Now that I know what truth is and Who truth is, I cannot think of anything better to do with my life than make it available to those wandering in the dark.
When Jesus spoke to the multitudes (it seemed he had a well-waxed sermon, judging by the detailed, word-by-word gospel accounts) he wrapped it up with a little parable. He said,
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” Matthew 7:24
This is the truth we may choose to believe; the propaganda that can rightly influence our lives and the lives of others who are looking for a solid rock on which to stand. It’s truth that helps us avoid certain heartache and is firm enough to support our entire future.
Without it, parents choose distraction over discipline. It matters because young men are bringing guns to school to shoot children and teachers. Teenagers are slitting their wrists and starving their bodies. Children are encouraged to experiment with gender identity and perverted lifestyles. It matters because the because this world is an awful mess and we know the Truth that can set them free.
All of us harbor disdain for God’s eminent order and purpose in the world. We find ourselves lacking in every way possible, proud yet hopelessly incomplete.
This is the mystery–that we are unbearable yet Christ bore our burdens in his body on the cross. In his crucifixion he crucified our old nature. He put to death our penchant for self and all its temporal desires. For the believer, our taste for the things of the world has dimmed, turned metallic and foul. We find ourselves hungry only for His words, satisfied only with the hope He is making all things new. Fighting like hell against the old man, the old nature, and the world that wants to make us check one box.
I look at my boy, almost ten years old, and I know (achingly so) I won’t be able to keep him out of the woods much longer. The world is full of perversions and half-truths, trees ripe with forbidden fruit.
But he has been fed a sturdy diet of the Word. The compass is in his pocket should he feel lost. There is the full armor of God, and we’ve been trying it on since he was little. The shield of faith that is heavy in his small arms is getting easier to hold.
We bind kindness and truth around his neck and pray it becomes graven indelibly on the tablet of his heart.
