My Children Are Being Asked What They Are

Her daughter came home and asked her at the sink and she gave an answer that she has been unhappy with for two weeks.

There had been something at school, one of those days where everybody says what their family does, and a girl had asked her, straightforwardly and without a trace of anything, what she is.

And her daughter had said, and she reported this with some pride, I do not know, we do a bit of both.

Which is honest and rather good for eight.

And she said, at the sink, oh, well, we are, and then she stopped, because everything she was about to say came out of one of the two rooms.

She could name the one they go to on a Sunday. That is a room. She could name the older thing on her husband's side that they keep some of and not all of. That is a room too. And whichever she said would be the answer given by a room and not the answer to what her daughter had actually been asked.

So she said something about how it is a bit complicated and we will talk about it properly, and her daughter went off entirely satisfied because eight year olds are, and she has been standing at that sink in her head ever since.

Because it is not the daughter's problem. It is that she went looking for what her children are and found that she has never once given them anything that did not come from a building.

You know that sink.

Maybe yours came at a family gathering. Maybe an aunt asked. Maybe your child was asked to tick a box on a form and looked up at you and you did not know which one to point at.

Nobody has failed anybody here. You have been giving your children something real for years, and the fact that it does not fit in a box is not a defect in your family, and the girl at school was not being unkind.

The name that comes from somewhere else

Here is a sentence that names people, and the interesting thing is where the naming comes from.

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.1 John 3:1

Bestowed. That is the verb, and it means given from above and not conferred by a body.

And read who does the calling: that we should be called the sons of God. The name is not a description we take for ourselves and it is not a status any assembly voted on. It arrives.

And then the third clause, which is the one for your daughter at the sink. Therefore the world knoweth us not. The writer expects this. He expects that the name will not be legible from outside, and he does not present that as a problem to be solved, he presents it as what follows.

You are called a child of God, and that name was bestowed rather than issued by any room. That is what 1 John 3:1 says with the verb it chooses, love bestowed and a name given (1 John 3:1), and it is the Holy Spirit who beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God (Romans 8:16), which is a mechanism that does not run through a school form.

And it is a whole answer for a child

Here is the practical part, because your daughter will be asked again, probably next term.

She does not need a category. She needs a sentence she can say without it costing her anything, and it has to be true, and it has to be short, and it has to not require her to explain your household to a nine year old at a lunch table.

We belong to God is a whole answer. It is true, it is short, it is not a room, and it is exactly what the verse says.

You have something to give your children that does not come out of a building. Scripture says now are we the sons of God (1 John 3:2), and read the tense, which is present and settled, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that real in a child rather than any amount of explaining on a parent's part.

And she can say we do a bit of both as well, because that is also true and she said it happily and there is nothing wrong with it.

Nothing here tells you what to do about the rooms

I want to be plain, because this is where a page like this could hand a tired parent a decision.

Nothing here says pick one for the sake of the children. Nothing here says do not pick one. Nothing here tells you what to keep from either side, what to teach, what to drop, or which building to be in on a Sunday.

Those are yours and your husband's and they are not this site's business, and a page that ruled on your household would be doing the exact thing that has made your daughter's question hard to answer, which is trying to answer it from a room.

You are not being handed a decision about your family, and nobody here is ranking anything. The word says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (Romans 14:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that persuading in a household over years, which is why nobody gets to shortcut it from outside.