Now that school is out for a little while I am able to expand my horizons, so to speak. Tonight was no exception. I filled in for the teacher of the 4-6 grades Bible Skills & Drills class. As it turned out, I only had one student, Elijah. One of the regulars is a heart transplant patient and was in Chapel Hill getting his regular scheduled biopsy and the other two were out of town.
Elijah and I had a nice class time playing the Books of the Bible CD game that went along with tonight's lesson and we got into a discussion of God's character. We talked about big words such as omnipresent and omniscient and omnipotent. Then out of the blue, Elijah asked me if I thought God was greedy.
Of course my first answer was, of course not, why do you think God is greedy? He preceded to tell me that God wants everything. He wants us to love him and worship him and adore him, etc. By this perception of this young boy, he decided God was greedy.
I thought about this before answering and wondered if I could come up with something that would help Elijah understand the difference. I told him that if I were a greedy person, I would want everything for myself. Since God already owns everything, the things he wants from us is for our good, not God's.
Since God doesn't need, God can't be classified as greedy. Can he?
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No, I don't think God's greedy. However, it's good to talk about these things with kids. When I was younger and and attending Awana Camp (Dr. Brock would just cringe) I asked a counselor why jealousy is wrong, but the Bible says that God is a jealous God. She explained to me that it was different. I honestly don't remember all that she said, but it helped me understand it. So thanks for helping this child understand something theologically. You might have helped him more than you know.
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