Imagine That

“Mom, is God a boy or a girl?” Ezra asked on the ride home from taking my mother to the airport today.

“Well that’s a good question.  What do you think?”

“Boy!” both boys shouted in unison.

“Well, what does the Bible say?  When it says that God made man and woman in the image of God, what does that mean?”

“I dunno,” was the reply of someone in the backseat.

“What was Jesus?”

“A boy!”

“And what does he call God?”

“Father!”

“Okay.  That sounds like if God wanted to make people in his image, he should have made only men.  If God is a boy and wanted to make people who looked like him and acted like him, he could have made only men, right?  So why did he make women, and why does he say that they too are in his image?”

Earlier in the day, I had sat with each boy and ran through the first lesson of On Cloud Nine. The heart of this math program is “imaging;” it’s visualizing numbers, the number line, and word problems.  When you see two blocks, say the authors of the program, you should be able to visualize a two in your mind.  I still don’t completely understand the importance of this particular step, but I like where the program goes down the road so I just went with it as written.

I showed the boys the cubes, and the cards with the numbers on them, and then asked them to close their eyes and get a picture of the number in their head.  Neither boy could do it.  When they saw that I was frustrated, they each lied and told me they could see the numbers – which is equally sweet and horrifying.  Then I tried to close my eyes to visualize a number myself and realized that I couldn’t do it either.  A quick trip back to the book and I realized that we were not supposed to close our eyes.

Does all of this sound ridiculous?  It did to me too.  But I ignored that sinking feeling, the one that was hinting that just maybe this was not the right program for us, the one that was accusing me of spending too much money on a program I had doubts about after attending the training.

We forged on, and I saw hints that things might improve.  Like the fact that neither boy told me it was “stupid baby work,” even though all we were doing was trying to imagine a blue three or a green five as we air wrote the number and said it aloud.  I could see something going on in their heads as they tried to “image” the numbers.  Just as the book predicted, when they started trying to imagine the numbers, they eyes went to the upper corners of their sockets.   What I thought we would fly through because it was too easy was actually in that sweet spot of just hard enough.

If nothing else, the langue of “imaging” something was helpful as we worked our way through Ezra’s question later in the day in the car.

“So why does he say that women too are made in his image,” I asked again on the ride home.

“I don’t know.  Just tell us,” they each protested.

“Well, the Bible uses lots and lots of male language for God, like Jesus and Father.  But it also uses some feminine images, too.”

“Like what?” demanded Zach.

“Well, the Bible says that God is like a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings.  And there are references to the wisdom of God where wisdom is female.  And sometimes God’s spirit is referred to with a feminine word, like Ruach.”

“Then maybe God has two hearts and two heads,” posited Ez.

“Maybe, but I think that God is so glorious, so amazing, that there is no way we can picture him.  I just don’t think we can imagine anything as wonderful as God.”

“That’s too bad,” lamented Zach.

“Yeah,” concurred Ez.  “He’s making it kind of hard for people to believe in him.”

Image problems all around today.