Teachable Moments

A friend called yesterday and mentioned during the chat that his little girl’s pet died last night. He described her questions about why God would allow such a thing, why He apparently doesn’t hear or doesn’t answer “yes” to prayers for the healing of a sick animal, and why innocent animals suffer while evil people get away with very bad things. He told me that his answers were pretty weasely (his phrase) and that he didn’t think she was satisfied with them.

Pastors and other overpaid authority figures like to throw around a phrase: “This is a teachable moment.” The phrase is intended to mean, “Here’s a moment when a person’s mind is malleable and workable, an opportunity to allow circumstances to teach a valuable, indelible lesson – don’t squander it.” But like all such phrases, it has become a meaningless bit of clique jargon, most helpful in flicking the off switch in the hearer’s mind.

But my reaction to my friend’s description of his daughter’s questions was This is a teachable moment. What better opportunity to not say the standard things: We can’t know such things…We’re not supposed to question…God’s in control of all of these things….

Why not say to the little girl, “Hmmm….those are good questions. Why do you think God didn’t answer your prayers? What makes us think he knows everything all the time? Where did we get the idea that if we just pray hard enough, He will say ‘yes’ to us? How did these ideas take root in us? Tell you what….go and think about these things, and then come back with the answers that come to you, and we’ll talk some more.”

My friend’s daughter’s questions are important. They are eternal. They are universal. And they are not well-served with smug, pat answers chirped back at the questioner almost before the questions have finished ringing in the air. I know that from my own experience, a huge portion of the anger, bitterness, and confusion I still feel about God and spiritual matters can be traced back to the chipper, prefabricated, unthinking responses to such questions that I’ve received all my life. And when pat answers collide with reality, the resulting wreckage can be devastating.

~ S.K. Orr