After writing the post I did on whether or not Christians should be celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden, one reader left a comment asking me what I finally told my 8-year old daughter, Sydney, when she asked me why the crowds were celebrating someone dying when someone dying is usually sad.
These are the times that parents feel like idiots, and we find ourselves looking into the sweet faces of our children, knowing that the words that are about to come out of our mouths will be sorely inadequate. So, I took a deep breath and gave it my best “I’ve only had 2 cups of coffee” answer.
I kept it as simple as I could make it, and asked her if she would be sad when satan gets thrown into the lake of fire, and she said no. “Well, Sydney. This man was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, so while he wasn’t satan, he did seem to have a lot of satan in him.”
It didn’t solve all the questions that I’m sure she had about what is admittedly a confusing issue, but it was an attempt. The more important issue, I told her, was that we live our lives in such a way that people won’t dance in the streets when we die.
I’d love to hear from you. What would you have said?
good answer……..dont know for sure what I would have said.
I agree with Renee”, good answer. I think the way you answered her question was right and we will rejoice when satan is thrown in the lake of fire and we will live forever with our Lord and Savior.
Great answer. I don’t think I could have come up with a better one. Vance is finally at an age where he’s asking tough questions and I pray everyday that God will give me wisdom to give him the right answers. This is when parenting really gets challenging but so rewarding at the same time because usually his response to whatever answer I give him is priceless.
My favorite times are when I would try really hard to answer one of my children’s questions and would say something that made very little sense and then they would respond with, “Yeah, it’s like ___________________” and their explanation would be 1000x better than mine was!