There are certainly two approaches of reality for the child-mind to the idea of God. Two immediate experiences are rich in meaning; they are the life of the family and the wonder of the everyday world, the life and variety of nature and human activities. The first is a very simple and rich approach. By every possible means help children in the family to think of God as the great and good Father of us all. Do this in the phrasing of prayers and graces, in the answers to their questions, in the casual word. Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is for the adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on us like a new day of freedom in truth in later years instead of becoming ours in childhood and so determining the habit and attitude of our lives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. God in terms of fatherhood is the sum and source of all that is ideal in personality.
The child's keen interest in the world of nature is our opportunity to lead him to love the gracious source of all beauty and goodness. How keen is the child's enjoyment of the beauty of the world! Can we forever fix the general concept of all this beauty as the thought of God in the words of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not also connect the idea of God with the affairs of daily life? That depends on the parent's attitude of mind; if we think of the universal life that is behind all battles and business and affairs, there will be a difference in our answers to the thousand curious inquiries that rise in the child's mind.
Nor must we leave the child to think of God as a separate, far-off person, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his way into a universe. The God who is a minute fraction of that universe makes possible the religion that is no more than a negligible fraction of life. The child asks concerning clouds, the sea, the trees, the birds, and all the world about him; he tends to interpret it causally and ideally. Childhood affords the great opportunity for giving the color, the beauty and glory, the life of the divine to all this universe, to instil the feeling that God is everywhere, in all and through all, and that in him we live and move and have our being. The child's joy in this world can thus be given a religious meaning. He sings
My God, I thank thee thou hast made
This earth so bright....,
and so beauty and joy become part of his religion. His faith becomes a gladsome thing; he knows that the trees of the forest clap their hands, the mountains and the hills sing, and the morning stars chant together in the gladness of the divine life.
Such a view of the world comes not by prearranged and indoor interviews. One must walk out into the good outdoor world for the opportunity and the inspiration. The garden plot, the park, and, best of all, the open fields and woods speak to a child and furnish us an open book from which we may teach him to read. Recalling religious impressions, the writer would testify to feeling nothing deeper, as a result of church attendance in childhood, than the shapes of seats and the colors of walls; but there remain deep impressions of wonder, beauty, and the meaning of God from Sunday mornings spent with his father under the great beeches in Epping Forest, listening to the reading and singing of the old hymns, or joining in conversation on the woods and the flowers, and even on the legends of Robin Hood in the forest.
§ 6. THE EVERYDAY OPPORTUNITIES
Seventhly, natural conversation affords the best opportunity for direct instruction. A child is a peripatetic interrogation. His questions cover the universe; there are no doors which you desire to see opened that he will not approach at some time. There is great advantage when the religious question rises normally; when the child begins it and when the interest continues with the same naturalness as in conversation on any other subject. Then questions usually take one of three forms: mere childish, curious questions, questions on conduct, and questions on religion in its organized form.
The child's curiosity is the basis of even those questions which have usually been credited to preternatural piety. The tiny youngster who asks strange questions about God asks equally startling ones about fairies or about his grandmother. But his questions give us the chance to direct him to right thoughts of God. Here we need to be sure of our own thoughts and to keep in mind our principal purpose, to quicken in this child loyalty to the highest and best. He must be shown a God whom he can love and, at the same time, one who will call for his growing loyalty, his courage, and devotion. Everything for the child's future depends on the pictures he now forms. We all carry to a large degree our childhood's view of God.
Some of the child's questions probe deep; how shall we answer them? When you know the truth tell him the truth, being sure that it is told in language that really conveys truth to his mind. The danger is that parents will attempt to tell more than they know, to answer questions that cannot be answered, or that they will, in sloth or cowardice or ignorance, tell children untrue things. If a child asks, "Did God make the world?" the answer that will be true to the child may be a simple affirmative. If the child asks or his query implies, "Did God make the leaves, or the birds, with his fingers?" we had better take time to show the difference between man's making of things and the working of the divine energy through all the process of the development of the world. When the child asks, "Mother, if God made all things, why did he make the devil?" it would surely be wise and opportune to correct the child's mental picture of a personal anti-God and to take from him his bogey of a "devil." But the question of the relation of God to the existence of evil would remain, and the best a parent could do would be to illustrate the necessities of freedom of choice and will in life by similar freedom in the family.