In the car on the way home from school today, Kaylee immediately started shrieking and whining that her lips were killing her and that she needed chapstick now now now! I told her I didn't have any, and asked her why she'd get in the car just fine and then freak out as soon as I started driving, and what was up with the bad attitude. She was quiet for about 5 minutes, and then she said "Mommy, why do I feel like I need to complain even if there's nothing to complain about? I feel okay, why do I feel like I want to complain?" I said "Maybe you are tired from school and it's making you grumpy." She said "Or maybe it's Satan making me do bad things." I said that Satan isn't making her do bad things, she has a choice of how she will act, but that sometimes we all let the grumpies and "sin nature" win.
The next question out of her mouth was "Why does bad even exist?" (No, that's not a tough question!) I said that God wanted the world to be perfect, but he gave humans free choice, and they made bad ones, and the world couldn't be perfect any more. "So why does Satan have to even exist?" I made a horribly, embarrassingly lame response of how in the world there is both good and bad, and that we can't truly appreciate and know and choose the good if we don't have the bad to compare to; like how we can't appreciate Spring without Winter and bright days without night. Kaylee chewed on that for a minute, then said "But in the end, God will get rid of Satan, right?" I said yes, to which she responded "Then why doesn't he do it NOW?" Again, Laura's Lame Answer to a 7-year-old with questions that have plagued philosophers for centuries... "Because there is a timeline for everything, and we don't know it all or understand it all because we are not God, but it is not yet time for God to take care of Satan."
Just when I thought I was off the hook, she says "Mrs. D says you are wrong and that you DO have to be baptized in order to be saved." Internally I groan and say "I told you that you didn't need to go to school and argue with Mrs. D about it, just that we believe a different way on what it takes to be 'saved'." Kaylee comes back with "I already argued about it. I already told her the Bible doesn't say you have to be Baptized to be saved, and she says it does too and that you are wrong." I just replied that she is interpreting a verse or two a different way than we do, and that it's fine for Mrs. D to believe however she does, and it's fine for us to believe how we do, and we feel that being Baptized is a show of faith that you can *choose* to take or not take in public, not that it will stop you from getting into Heaven if you don't.
Kaylee does not like the dichotomy of her all-knowing teacher differing from her all-knowing mother (in her eyes). She doesn't like that one or the other is "wrong".
So once we got home, I took Kaylee to several places in the Bible; the Romans Road, verses in Revelation and John, and I showed her that over and over it says "Call on" or "Believe in" or "Accept" Jesus and "you will be saved". Nowhere in there does it say "Just be baptized and you will be saved." Baptism is an action, and our own actions can not 'save' us. Rather Baptism is a committment, a public expression of faith, simple symbology for ending an old life and being reborn into a new. Kaylee understands, and then asks me if I'll print that off so she can take it to school and show Mrs. D. I said that she isn't equipped to argue this position with Mrs. D and that I don't really want her to go to school and get in an argument with an adult over baptism.
Seemingly out of the blue, she then asks "Is it sundown yet?" That throws me, and I say "no, why?" She moves her hair away from her head and says "Because they said I could not wipe off this cross until sundown." Sure enough, there's a cross in ash on her head that I hadn't seen under her bangs. She asks me if she has to leave it on there. I asked her why they told her it was there in the first place, and she had no clue. I told her that the cross was symbolic for something that she didn't even know and was a symbology that held no meaning for us (since we don't celebrate "Ash Wednesday"), and that no, she doesn't have to leave it on there until sundown. I also told her she didn't need to go to school and say "I wiped it oooofffff! I wiped it ooooffff!"
I now need another nap. Perhaps the Baptist school would have been the better of the two choices as I'd have a lot less explaining to do. :) They also wouldn't perform any religious rituals on my daughter at school, other than having prayer in class. I think it's really ironic that a religious group called "Baptist" does NOT insist on Baptism as a saving measure, while "Lutherans" do.
Kaylee is a very logical little girl, and she has enough of her dad in her to want to argue with everybody who is not answering her in a correct or logical manner. It reminds me of the story about when Steve refused to answer questions like "Yes, man descended from monkeys" on tests in his science or evolution class, failed the whole class where he otherwise had straight A's, and said he would have answered (for example) "Yes, the Theory of Evolution States that man descended from monkeys", but he was not going to say "yes they did" because in his opinion they in fact did not. Most kids would have just answered it and moved on, not causing a stink involving parents, teachers and principals. Not Steve. And something tells me, not Kaylee. I'm seeing school experiences flashing before my eyes already...
*tightens up seatbelt* :)
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