Sunday School

Every now and then, I volunteer as a helper in the Sunday School at my church. It's a smallish church, so all the kids age 5-11 are together in one big group for the lesson, with smaller discussion and project groups at tables for the rest. I'm normally at the 1st-2nd grade table, but today I had a great conversation with a very interesting third grader named Emily.

Emily is absolutely tiny: she's probably about fifty pounds and as tall as her first-grade sister. She has a pale, irish complexion and unruly, wavy blonde hair. She has an incredible amount of energy, but controls it very well when she's called upon to. She's very loud, frank, matter-of-fact, and fact-driven; she's inquisitive, intelligent and has a very strange vocabulary that often seems unfitting for a third-grader... Today we were sitting next to each other for worship and the little sermon they get, and while they were transitioning from singing to speaking, she tells me, "My back is sore." "Why?" "Well, I think I sprained a muscle by my ribcage while I was jogging yesterday. I was wearing a heavy pack." That's the kind of kid she is.

I don't really treat the kids I teach as kids, because I always got pissed off with those adult leaders that thought they knew everything when I was a kid in Sunday School. By that I don't mean that I treat them as adults, but that I refuse to treat them in a demeaning way. I joke with them, I laugh with them, I treat them like they're my friends that I happen to have a measure of authority over. I believe that children deserve more thorough, but more concise and existentially-relevant answers to their questions. Since I was that age, I always wished children could lead children in that kind of environment, because adults just don't remember what it was like. I put a lot of effort into sustaining that memory.

Today the teacher was using stereotypes to explain to kids that they judge based on appearances, but God can see exactly who we really are on the inside. I think it's a clever idea to introduce this idea to kids, but only few of them absorbed what she was saying because of the way she said it. It's a big philosophical concept: I've spent hours upon hours thinking through the problems around stereotypes, written blogs on it, read philosophy on it, had long arguments about it. Emily was attentive as usual, and pipped up towards the end of the explanation:

"But wait, some things on the outside can't change. What if they could? What happens, for example, when I see a boy, but... they think they're a girl on the inside, but they're a boy on the outside. Does God choose the outside or the inside? Which one is real?"

The teacher didn't seem to comprehend her question, because she simply answered that God knows us all, inside and out, and hastily moved on with the lesson. I told Emily in a hushed voice that that was a very good question, and that we should talk about it after Church. She agreed, and set up a meeting with me in the lobby of the other building, because she'd made an agreement with her parents to meet them there after the service. She confirmed the meeting after the lesson was over. All with a very strange, mature, businesslike air. She's an incredibly fun girl to know.

I mean, within the span of five minutes, Emily, and any other kid there that had an idea of what was going on, was introduced to two of the biggest concepts I've spent my last two years of life picking apart: gender and stereotype. I could have had a good ten minutes of lucrative discussion with Emily that she would have appreciated and that I would have been ecstatic to have with her.

But alas, parents. She really had planned to meet her parents exactly where she said she would in the lobby, and so we only had a couple minutes to talk while her mother stood by with a strange, slightly hasty look on her face. So I didn't feel comfortable explaining anything about gender, and I just explained what her teacher had originally meant: that God understands everything the goes on inside of people, not just what we can see from the outside. After a few questions for clarification, she thanked me, remarked abruptly that she likes chocolate brownies, and left with her family. Okay, then.

I think there are a lot of conversations that children really can handle at a very young age, but that adults think are inappropriate until the late teens. I find this most largely relevant to gender/orientation/sex, but this is applicable to the part of the conversation that was about stereotypes, too. Sure, some kids aren't able to handle deep philosophy. But I've actually found that kids have a much easier time talking about extremely huge concepts than many high schoolers. They don't understand big words or nuanced doctrine or modal logic, but you can often have wonderful conversations with them about substitutionary atonement and love and free will and... any myriad of wonderful topics, if you put it simply enough. Kids are often very open to any random topic of conversation, and they can engage it intensely for a short period of time and then go play and be fine.

Everyone in conservative Christian circles seems to think that orientation and gender and sexuality of any sort are things that need to be bottled up and never addressed for fear that it'd aggravate the "problem." But how much more sense would it make to expose kids to the concept of sex early on, in a relatively no-fuss, desensitized way? The same might be said for gender stereotypes, orientation, fantasy, masturbation, etc... Even if kids don't know much about it, if kids know that it exists when it becomes relevant - which, in case you didn't know, is normally before age 8 - maybe a lot fewer people would have to deal with the whole secrecy/alienation/addiction/fear thing when they're grown.

There have been so many occasions, whether in a totally depersonalized way on YouTube, or talking to acquaintances, or in conversations with my best friends, like one I had recently, where people have to deal with all the regular problems that arise from the misuse of sexuality along with all the regular problems that arise from repression. I can't help but wonder if it would be healthier for kids to grow up knowing that their thoughts and questions and experiences and issues exist in other people, too, when they encounter them in themselves.