Presence

It's amazing to me how early kids begin to reason about God. I guess since the parochial educational system introduces the concept of God from the get-go, the kids have no choice but to speculate as to the nature of the deity.

My son Ezra (4 years old; actually, if you ask him, today is his half-birthday, so he is 4 and a half years old) recounted a debate he had with one of his classmates, who we'll call Baruch (I'm not trying to disguise anything; that's his real name).

Baruch mentioned that he believed God is mean to us, and that he had a "shooter gun" with which he inflicts harm on us. As I recall, this was the week the class learned about the story of Bereshis and Noach and The Flood, so Baruch's position here is not without explication. Ezra, on the other hand, countered that God was good, an insight he no doubt gleaned from the story of creation, or from music class. I haven't followed up to see how the discussion is going, but no doubt they applied the Hegelian dialectic and have arrived at the conclusion that God is the source of both good and bad.

Another conversation I had with Ezra surprised me. We were listening to the musical stylings of Uncle Moishe, when the timeless classic, "HaShem is here," came on. For those of you unfamiliar with this work of musical mastery, the lyrics state:

"HaShem is here, HaShem is there, HaShem is truly everywhere. Up, up. Down, down. Right, left and all around. Here, there and everywhere, that's where he can be found."

Upon hearing this, Ezra remarked that HaShem is in all of us, in him, in me, in the rocks and in the trees (I believe he had support for this statement, again, from a song he learned in music class). I was surprised, as I recognized this as pantheism, the idea that God and Nature are all comprised of one substance, most notably espoused by Spinoza. I was impressed that he was willing to adopt such a liberal view at such a young age, and was going to question him further about his beliefs, but when we got home, he quickly ran inside and became engrossed in the latest episode of Dragon Tales.

It really is amazing to me that kids so young are trying so hard to make sense of the world they are presented with. I guess it shouldn't surprise me. The hard part, for me, is sitting back and letting all the various influences, the parochial school curriculum, his classmates, Jewish music, have their say, imparting the conventional wisdom of Orthodox Judaism to my son, without interjecting my own beliefs. Despite the importance of a rational conceptualization of God, the bottom line is that we really can't know anything about Him.

Update: Last night at dinner, Ezra asked me who created God. Ezra reasoned that He created Himself. I wonder if he's been reading my copy of The Guide?