conversation

this saturday is earth day, so we're spending the week in science learning about it.

one of the first questions anyone had about the earth was "who made it?". not wanting to be too ... whatever, i asked the class to share their thoughts. the resounding answer, um god did, of *course*. okay, well, then who made god? oh geez. i told them that the bible says that god has always existed and will always exist, no one made him, he made everything. and then well, who made the devil? two of the students wove together a little, fairly accurate, narrative about the devil's fall, which ended with the devil in hell where "all you bad people gonna go and you be burnin forever and the devil's all around you and you be screamin but no one cares and you're there forever".

then the question was, how do you avoid that? i let the kids have a go at that one, and we got lots of 'be good and behave in school' (believe it or not, not the answer i was looking for ... :)), love was in there somewhere, respect and kindness, follow the 10 'rules' that god gave to moses (which were all listed by one student - i was impressed), follow god, love god, worship god, do the right thing ...

i ended the classroom discussion with telling them that it matters more what you believe about god than what you do, reminded them why they all celebrated easter yesterday, and said, i think sort of quickly (dah), so believing in jesus is where it's at. let's go to recess. you guys just made your own social studies lesson.