What Children Ask

Question 1

My five year old daughter Elizabeth wants to know why she can't see God and why He won't talk to her. I have told her that God's friends, the Saints, could talk to Him and see Him because they were so good and always loved everybody and were never nasty (I was talking to a five year old). Was this the right thing to say? K.T.

Answer

Your answer was correct to the extent that it went, and for a five year old this may well be sufficient. As the child gets a little older and grows more inquisitive, perhaps you could add that young children sometimes do see God and the angels. In the life of St Seraphim an incident is described where a mother came with her child to speak to the Saint. They happened to be in Church and the child began to run around playfully. The mother thought this was not proper, being in Church, and told the youngster to stop, at which point St Seraphim told her not to intervene because the child was playing with his guardian angel. God loves all children and would like them to see Him but He can't let that happen because that would cause problems with the adults.

Hundreds of years ago many more people loved God and so there were lots of saints, but now people are becoming more selfish, and greedy. They disobey God and instead of loving God and other people they start wars, and innocent people get killed. Not loving God and disobeying Him is called sin, and sinful people cannot be with God because they don’t want to be with Him.

So if they do not want to be with God, then they cannot see Him either. But God still loves everybody and doesn’t want anyone to suffer. He wants everyone to live in peace, but if He allowed some adults (those who love Him) to see Him but did not let the others to see Him (those who did not love Him), this would cause a lot of arguments and anger. Why? Because those who did not see Him would accuse those who did see Him of lying, or (even worse), they would call them crazy, and this would create anger and hatred. So to avoid such conflict and fighting, God talks to people through their hearts, and that way they learn to love Him.

The same thing happens with children. Imagine if God allowed young children to see Him but did not allow the adults. Again this would cause the same problems: the parents would not know if their child was telling the truth, or was just imagining this, or was in fact telling a little fib. This would cause all sorts of confusion, especially with those parents who did not love God; they would get angry at their children, and could even punish them for nothing.

So in order to avoid all these problems and to help people live in peace, it is better for us to talk to God. He hears everything we say, and He does listen and help us. Sometimes, however, we can ask for things that could be harmful and in that case God does not answer the way we want, and so we think He is not listening. Say, for example, a little infant wants to climb up stairs but the mother won’t let it, because the infant could easily fall and get hurt. And so it is with God. It is important to always love Him and He will always love us and protect us.

This is one example of the sort of logic that can be used when explaining such issues to children. Needless to say, the comments would be made at the child’s level of understanding, as was demonstrated by K.T.

Question - 2

My 7 year old son John has been distressed over the possibility of not getting to Heaven because of bad thoughts. He says: Mummy I do love God but I sometimes get a thought that I don’t love Him, and so I say to the thought that I DO LOVE GOD. But I’m worried that God will not let me into Heaven because of these bad thoughts. M.A. – New Zealand

Answer

You are to be complemented for successfully instilling the love for God in your children – they are well on their way to salvation.

Children do their fastest learning over a short period of several years, starting from about the age of 3. So what they learn and experience during this period is critical and sets them up for life as adults. This phase of their development literally moulds their souls and develops their personalities. It’s most important that parents relate to their children on a regular basis, not just formally, but playfully, doing activities together. Brushing aside children’s requests for interaction is enormously counter productive. That’s the background.

Tell young John that God knows that he loves Him and He sees him as a hero, like a soldier fighting for God. And all of God's heros go to Heaven. Mention that in the other world there are good angels and bad angels and that it is the bad ones who make us think that we do not love God. They trick us and make us think that these are our own thoughts. But God can see what is happening and sends the good angels to protect us. Reassure your child of this and tell him that he does not need to argue with these thoughts; he can just say in his mind occasionally: God I love you, and that will make God smile.

Question 3

This question was sent in directly by John, the young theologian from New Zealand (who asked the previous question): Do animals go to heaven to be with God?

Answer

Dear John

Thank you for your letter and especially for your question about whether animals go to Heaven.

From the time that Adam and Eve were created and until Jesus comes again, only people’s souls continue to live after the body dies. So that means that, for the time being, animal souls do not go to heaven – they are waiting for Jesus’ return.

Some big saints, like St Simeon the New Theologian, teach that when Jesus comes again, the whole world with all the people and animals, as well as the moon and the sun, and all the planets and stars, will all change suddenly. Everything will be better and prettier. At that time the animals, and the birds and the fish will all be brought back, and they will all be friendly and loving.

God wanted things to be that way from the beginning when He created the world, but because Adam and Eve (and everybody afterwards) disobeyed God, and stopped loving Him, everything deteriorated – got worse. This is what happens when people stop loving God, but the good thing is that God never stops loving us, as well as everything else that He created.

St Basil the Great, who lived 1600 years ago, wrote the following prayer for animals.

“O GOD, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our little brothers to whom Thou hast given this earth as their home in common with us.

May we realise that they live not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee, and that they love the sweetness of life even as we do, and serve Thee better in their place than we do in ours.”

Ask mum to explain some of the complicated words in the prayer.

One more thing, there is a nice book that you will enjoy reading. It is called:
“Animals and Man: A State of Blessedness,” by Joanne Stefanatos. We will try to get you a copy soon.

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Question(s) 4

My 14 year old daughter asks what happens to the people who die and are not Orthodox? Do they go to Heaven? – RP

My dad asks the same question. He thinks Mother Teresa might be in Heaven. Please help my dad understand this better too. – Savoulla K

Answer

Let us begin first by rephrasing the question: Do Orthodox people go to Heaven? Normally when we rephrase something we say the same thing in different words, but here it appears that we are not saying the same thing – one question refers to Orthodox and the other to non-Orthodox. It’s as if they are opposite questions.

Both questions are related by the fact their answers are the same: some do go to Heaven and some don’t. Some non-Orthodox go to Heaven and some do not; likewise some Orthodox go to Heaven and some do not. How does this work?

We must understand that God wants every single person to go to Heaven – from Adam and Eve to the last person who will be born on Earth. Not only that, but God would also accept demons back in Heaven. So why does this not happen? The short answer is that not everyone wants to go to Heaven. Sounds strange if not crazy, doesn’t it? After all, who in their right mind would want to go to hell, where there is nothing but pain and suffering?

The problem is that we have the wrong understanding of Heaven and Hell, and how people end up in either place. We think that the good people deserve to be in Heaven; so as long as they have not done something really bad, God is obliged to accept them into Heaven; no one deserves terrible punishment for ordinary day to day stuff, including little sins. And the same logic applies to the evil people, like mass murderers; they deserve to go to Hell.

This attitude is based on justice, and God is viewed as a judge who decides where everyone goes. But in reality it does not work that way. We have all heard that God is a loving God; and indeed He is. As such He cannot hurt anyone. So when a person dies God wants that soul to have as much ‘joy’ as possible - forever. But maximum joy can only occur when we are with God. However, as we see by the world around us, not everyone wants to be with God. In fact, most people reject God, and many absolutely hate Him - this then means that they do not want to be with God, either here or in the next world. And if that is the case, then, by definition, they cannot have maximum joy.

So what is the next option? God cannot force Himself on anyone. If God forced those people who did not like Him to nevertheless be with Him forever (in Heaven), then they would actually suffer by being in His presence. Imagine spending every minute of the day with someone you hate – you certainly would not be happy. This often happens when people who have terrible bosses at work, and as a result their life is a misery, even outside work. So God, being a loving God, does not make those people who reject Him stay with Him. He does not push them away, nor throw them out of Heaven, or even worse, throw them into Hell. Instead, God allows them to go where they want; where they will feel most comfortable, and therefore where they will experience least pain.

The more sinful a person is, the further he wants to be away from God; and God allows that. It becomes their choice, not God’s. Consequently the really bad people choose to be as far away from God as possible. From this we see that Hell is a place where God is not.

In actual fact, God also dwells in hell, because every person is God’s child, and God wants to be with His children. But because He does not want to inflict pain on them, He makes Himself invisible to them.

However, every person has been made in God’s image, and so the natural inclination of the heart is to be with God. It is the brain (or mind) that makes the decision to rebel against God. As a result conflict occurs between mind and heart, and when the heart is denied love (for God especially) it will always feel unhappy. This means that those people, who have rejected God, will forever be sad, even if there was no other pain involved in their existence. But with this sadness come other emotions; people feel frustration, anger and despair. And to make things worse, they are forever surrounded by others who have the same feelings, so all those in hell get on one another’s nerves.

Now we need to backtrack a bit. What stops us from loving God, and then going to Heaven? - our attachment to worldly things and worldly life-style. We get so attached to them that we become slaves to passion. We develop a powerful love for these passions and every day look forward to experiencing them, over and over again; for example, those people who crave for marijuana or heavy rock music (just to name the obvious) feel like they cannot live without them. And that is true. But what happens when the soul has departed from the body? These passions follow the soul into the next world, and they demand satisfaction. So now, despite the fact that the soul sees God, it finds that whatever love it had for God, that love is overcome by the desire for marijuana and heavy rock music. But marijuana and rock music do not exist in the spiritual world, so the cravings get worse; they continue to increase unabated, thereby creating personal hell for the soul.

You see, God had absolutely nothing to do with this self-created hell. And worse still, He cannot take away those cravings because that is what the soul wants. God cannot violate our free will; He cannot transgress our desire. We get what we want.

The example we used seems perhaps extreme; after all, not everyone is into marijuana and heavy rock. True, but that’s not the point. The fact is everything worldly can have the same effect. So does this mean that we cease living in the world? Not at all. What it means is that we can be members of this world and experience all its (non-sinful) delights without becoming passionately attached to them. How? - by allowing God to be part of our daily life. This does not mean that we physically must reject the world. We could not do this even if we wanted to, and nor should we, since the world has been created for us by God.

The surest path to achieving detachment from passions is Orthodoxy because it offers maximum interaction with God, particularly through the holy sacraments. When we go to confession, sins are forgiven, meaning that the stranglehold those passions (sins) had on us are now loosened. In addition when we take Communion, God physically enters us, and strengthens us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the process our love for God grows, while the love for passions dissipates. The sacraments and communions with God directly impacts on the heart. Any other process or religious path, focuses primarily on the rational mind, and therefore can never be as effective.

Above all that, however, the Orthodox path is so effective because it is the one that has been set up and blessed by God.

Now getting back to the original question, personified by Mother Teresa; there is no reason to believe that she is not in Heaven with God. She did not use the Orthodox sacraments during her journey to God, but she did what she believed was correct, according to her conscience, and more than anything she did the most important thing; she gave God her heart. This means that had she been raised in Orthodoxy, she would have excelled in leaps and bounds. So when her soul entered the other world, what was her desire? – to be with God. There were no demands placed on her soul by worldly passions.

The holy fathers teach that non-Orthodox people will be judged according to different, less strict, criteria. Even in the case of primitive pagans living somewhere in isolation, who have never heard of Orthodoxy, and even of Christianity in general, can be saved. It their case it would be sufficient for them to live according to their conscience – to be kind and compassionate, and to believe in a god (who, by our standards, may actually be a pagan idol) . Their benchmark would be the Image of God in their souls and how they lived according to that image. In the case of Orthodox, however, much more was given (meaning that they could be more God-like if they so choose) and consequently much more will be required. By not making use of God’s sacraments, they are actually rejecting God Himself, and therefore it becomes infinitely more difficult to re-establish this love by the departed soul. So the path to salvation for Orthodox can be either much easier, or much more difficult, than for non-Orthodox, depending on how serious we are about living an Orthodox life.

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Questions 5 and 6

I wanted to share a couple of comments my six year old son, Jordan, has made.

Request for Baby

Jordan once asked my husband and me: when can he have a baby brother? At first we were a bit taken back and didn’t know how to respond. Not wanting to go into too much detail with him, I replied that he needs to pray to God and ask God to give us a baby. A few weeks had passed and out of the blue: When can I have a baby brother? I asked him: have you being praying to God? In a really soft voice and a sad face, he says: I have been praying to God but He is not listening.

Hubby turned around and explained to Jordan that there was a really long queue. There were lots of people in the queue and we have to wait patiently for our turn. We now both felt confident that Jordan was satisfied with this response and it would be the end of that.

Well.....now every so often Jordan asks: are we still waiting in the queue for our baby?

Teaching Adults to Pray

We have icons in our house and we always face them when we are saying our prayers. We were at a friend’s house one day and there were no icons. After dinner I told Jordan not to forget to cross himself and say thank you. So up goes his head, turning every direction and he says: but there's no Boshenka/God? So I proceeded to explain to him that Boshenka was everywhere; He will see you crossing yourself no matter where you are. “Is He up in the sky in the clouds?” and so forth and so forth. He seems to have understood, because he will now cross himself anywhere. What proved this was after eating at Foodstar one day, he dropped to the floor and crossed himself and did 3 prostrations. (Mind you I didn’t even prompt him the cross himself).

I’m not sure if my husband and I are giving the right answers to our son's questions, but I thought I share these two with you.

Answer(s)

Your answers are both appropriate and unique – especially the baby one. More importantly, as parents, you have succeeded in giving Jordan the highest and most precious gift possible: love for God at the most productive time of his life. You only have one thing left to do – keep doing what you are doing; and make sure that Jordan receives Holy Communion regularly (weekly) for the next few years at least.

Tell Jordan that God loves children even more than He loves angels, and that He always hears their prayers, including Jordan’s prayers for a baby.

Where there are no icons at the place where we are about to eat, we can face the food/table and cross ourselves. There could be a little practical problem with children doing prostrations at a public eating place – being small, someone could trip over them. Yet their hearts must not be discouraged from serving God with love.

Perhaps we can have Jordan as a guest speaker at one of our Forums :)

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