The following has been aggregated from a small experience in working with children. Names and details have been changed to insure privacy.
Me: “Hey! Good evening.”
Faye: “Good. Can we pick up my friend Steph?”
“If her parents are OK with it.”
“She lives on the other side of town. I can show you.”
We drive north out of town. “How was your day at school?” I ask. I run over a checklist to establish rapport, to establish a frame of reference. Something in common, something to share. Find out who her parents are, her favorite teacher. Do I know them? What is her favorite school subject? Maybe I can engage her on her English or Phys Ed or Dance, who cares? Track. Has she ever been to that ice cream joint east of town?
“Good. I go to alternative school.”
I know less about the public school system than I should, but something tells me now is a good time to change the subject.
Who is your daddy?
He lives in Florida. I live with my aunt. My mama was murdered when I was two and my brother Mavi was a baby. Turn right here to go to Steph’s house.
I glance sideways at my wife-to-be. She glances back. What to say? “Sorry to hear that.” What can you say? Banalities, inanities, nonsense, all of it.
“I hardly remember her.” Faye says. “Steph is my best friend.”
“Which apartment is it?” I ask. “Is it the one with the Halloween ghost on the door?”
“Yes. They have an Xbox.”
I go to the door. The mother has heard of us. Yes, Steph can go. Be good, honey. “I’ll have her back at 8:30, around there.” I say.
“Are you all married?” Faye asks.
“No.” I say. “We are dating. We have been dating for several months.”
“Do you all live together?”
Nope. We don’t do that until we get married.
Why not?
Children ask fantastic questions. We do our best to follow what we believe the Bible says, I tell her, and that means no divorce, no shacking up. I do my best to speak clearly, honestly, but am knee-deep in euphemisms.
“When are ya’ll going to have kids?”
Privacy is something else I can only wish for. Try answering this one when you have been dating for three months and your girlfriend is present.
But what if I had the opportunity to show them what real love looks like? The idea of love as we are attempting to live it is so foreign as to be incomprehensible. Explaining our dating culture while working inside the twisted versions of family as a fixed mother with a rotating cycle of daddies, or family as rotation of homes to sleep at when one sibling gets weary of you, without adding unnecessary knowledge to their minds, proves difficult. I tell her we won’t have children until after we are married.
Blank stares.
“Does a baked potato make you pregnant?”
“You should ask your mother that.”
“That’s what my grandma told me!”
We arrive and everyone pours out. We have a class about the Rich Man and Lazarus, in which I attempt to highlight what real riches are and who is likely to have them. “Let me ask you a question,” I say. “Who was the truly rich man in this story?”
“The Farmer.”
“But he went to hell. Is that what true riches does to us?”
Blank stares.
“Is it possible for a rich man to be foolish?”
“Nope.” Benji says.
A rich man insulates himself from nonsense, it appears. We have a snack and they throw grapes at each other. Some of them sit quietly, with uncomprehending eyes and they receive no attention at all, which seems backwards.
One young man folds an airplane out of his lesson paper, a new design he claims will fly 120 feet. It does. “Learned that last year in drug rehab.” He says. He is fifteen.
“Why does nobody here wear earrings?” Another young lad asks.
Break this down to a ten-year-old but do not condescend. “We don’t see the need for them,” I tell him. “Do you think yours make you handsomer?” A usual tactic: switch to the offensive with a possible tilt to getting them to think.
Nod of head.
Can I go now?
Not yet.
I’m bored.
Let’s wait until everyone is finished, then we will go play.
But I’m bored.
Next tactic: hit them with a huge smile, show them lots of teeth. They will melt under the rays of such a smile like cheese in the sun. They aren’t used to it. No reply necessary, just give them a hundred-watt smile that originates in your belly and lights up the eyes.
We go for playtime, and no one wants to play the assigned game. Once we convince everyone to join, no one wants to quit.
This night we roll out a new discipline program. Without something, the children control the environment and the environment they choose to create is far from studious or conducive to long lives. Now, we say, If you refuse to obey these three reasonable rules, we will expel you for the next time.
Alas, but some of them have taken lessons in dialectic straight from Schopenhauer.
“I just want to be accepted.” Faye says. “People are always marginalizing.”
Impressed by the use of a five-syllable word, it strikes me that this is not a new conversation for her. “We accept you.” I say, not sure where this is going. “We want you to come.”
“But if you expel me for not behaving, then you are being discriminating because I misbehaved.”
“No, we love you, God loves you, and we want you to be here. But we simply can’t have swear words and misbehaving, we have the rest of the children to think of. Besides, we can’t confirm misbehaving.”
She has along a smartphone, and she scrapes up a YouTube video of some pastor. She turns the volume all the way up. “Come just as you are,” the preacher is saying. “It doesn’t matter how you come or how you’re doing. Just come. Jesus loves us all the same.” She pauses the video.
See? She says. She wants to come just as she is, and let out whatever happens to spill out. I attempt an explanation about how we love her for who she is and who she can become, but we cannot condone and abide disrespect and bullying for the sake of the rest. This distinction between not loving the sin but loving the sinner comforts us in our theology—and perhaps it is a necessary distinction—but it is all but useless in a visible relationship with rebellion. And I see where they are coming from: What if an atheist said he thought I was a great fellow but hated my Christianity? How could I, with my identity, profession, future, and culture not feel as though he hated me?
One could, of course, point out that continuing in sin when they know of a better way is simply making a religion out of sin, allowing not Jesus to have authority but some other authority from the netherworld. But this argument appeals to the intellect, and therefore is bound to be ineffective when the transformation necessary needs to happen in the heart. Besides, she is only twelve.
I wish I could take back that conversation, confined with reason as it was. I would just shut my mouth and try my equine smile tactic, and let her run herself out of breath. That is better, if more difficult to do, but impossible to argue with. Even Schopenhauer couldn’t argue with that.
Descending into town, the lights of the town spread below. I turn left at the traffic light, and we talk about next time. Would they like to come?
No. I am never coming back.
They rest of the children join the pack, howling their avowed promise to never return. The solidarity among them never ceases to amaze me. One of them can lie to you with a straight face, and the rest of them will back the liar with equally serious faces, like the time a fifteen-year-old was driving a car and I asked him if he had his driver’s license. “Yes.” He lied, and all his friends covered for him. They lied so well and so compactly I relinquished my skepticism, only to discover the deception two weeks later.
We turn in at the equal housing apartments, also known as “the projects”, and they jump out. A shin-high heel-biter of a terrier with bulging eyes yaps at me, apparently also in conspiracy against us. I walk them to the door and they slam the door in my face. I can smell the smoke and musty carpet. What to do? I turn out into the rain.
(Two weeks later)
There’s Children’s Hour tonight, I tell the lady at the door, an aunt, sister, some relation, I can’t keep them straight. Would the children like to come?
Would they like to come! They pile out of the door and give us hugs, and we are the only ones who remember the last time.