You may already be familiar with E6:4, our website’s homegrown and very good parenting blog. This month’s E6:4 did not make The Branches due to electronic transmittal problems, but it is well worth reading. Click here for the Branches post: The Culture of Cool I also thought that this short reflection on the Virginia Tech tragedy was helpful: Dealing with Anger 

I’ll take “God” for $100, Alex: We’ve begun our annual Confirmation Class for our eight grade students. Missy and I co-teach the course, and it is always a highlight of the year. 2007’s crop of seven or eight students is a good one. At our first class this past Wednesday, parents and eighth graders met together. We broke the ice with some questions that may have been easier for the kids to answer than for the adults who had to remember back their own eighth grade years (my favorite TV show: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; don’t you wish you could have seen eighth graders Fred Lloyd and Cliff Conklin in their leisure suits?). After the ice was broken, parents and students alike shared one of their current big “God questions.” These are some of the questions these bright young Park People are asking:

• How can a loving God allow hunger and starvation to continue?

• There are so many different religions. How do we know which one is right?

• If God created everything, who created God?

• In the Old Testament, God seems to have zero tolerance. Did he just lighten up in the New Testament?

• When and how will the end of time come?

• Why does God forgive us if we’re so sinful?

And they learned that their parents often have equally vexing questions.

We’re not going to answer all these questions in our short time together on Wednesday evenings. We’re not even going to try. But we should gather some of the tools our kids will need to answer these and many more.

One of the joys of the Christian life, and especially in our Reformed expression of it, is the privilege, even the obligation, of asking questions; none too dumb and none too tough. I’m going to encourage the kids to keep asking their questions and keep listening for answers. I’m praying that they’ll never be satisfied with the easy answers offered by some or the no answers offered by others. I hope they’ll find that Jesus never condemned anyone for asking a question, in fact, while he often gave an answer they did not want to hear, Jesus always welcomed questioners. (When we first meet Jesus after the birth narratives, he is just a little younger than our eighth graders and he is in the temple asking questions (Luke 2:46). No wonder he likes people who ask questions!)

Our eighth graders are at such a great age. They’re asking all sorts of questions about all sorts of things. Those of us who know Jesus well will often be used by Him to respond to those questions – not with easy answers, but neither with a “there are no answers” shrug of the shoulders. We may not know the answers to all questions, but we know the answer to the deepest mystery of all: Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). And we’re called to share that answer winsomely and joyfully when called upon to do so: Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15).

Remember our Confirmation Class in your prayers!