the occasional occurrence

Here are a couple questions that Curtis (our 3-and-a-half year old) has asked me in the past 24 hours:

Dad, did God make microbes?

I think I stumbled through ok on this one. Something like:

Well Curtis, there are many good microbes, and even microbes that would be bad to get in our bodies have their place in nature.

Next question.

Dad, did God make tornadoes?

The tornadoes one; now that’s a bit tougher. I don’t think I have ever heard of a beneficial tornado. The pretty much only bring death and destruction. The best that I could do was try and explain that nature often displays the power of God, and that tornadoes are very powerful.

There are many things in the natural world other than tornadoes that are really destructive or at least certainly not beneficial to humans.

Volcanic eruptions. Mosquitoes. AIDS. Tsunamis. Lawyers.

Seriously though, maybe the real answer for Curtis (that I wouldn’t lay on his innocent heart at his tender age) is that death is part of life. God created life and the absence thereof; death, as we call it.

Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?

When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.

Ecclesiastes 7:13-14a

So we are screwed, right? Nah. We’ve got what we’ve got, and we need to be content in that*.

Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.

Job 1:21

Anyhow, as a parting thought; for those of you planning on raising your kids in a belief system, get ready for the tough questions. They can start coming pretty early.

cw

* Easy for me to say as a white middle class American, I suppose. I hope and pray that I would be able to say the same in other circumstances.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 9:18 am and is filed under Family, General, my faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.