Joshua 4

Kids can be dumb. Yeah, yeah, I know that they're brains are still forming and all that. Still, that's no excuse. I mean, how pathetic is it that kids have to rely on other people--namely, their parents--just to survive? Infants are especially woeful; they can't even move about by themselves, and they think the whole world revolves around them. (Some never grow out of this mindset.)

I'm kidding, of course. Having worked with kids, I know that they, like people in general, can be charming, annoying, witty, gross, insightful, malicious, affectionate--and dumb. For an example of juvenile stupidity, one need look no further than yours truly. When I was a kid, I remember going to a relative's house and wandering, uninvited, upstairs into the master bedroom. Big no-no. Luckily for me, the relatives didn't yell at me. (Either that, or they never found out.) Another time, I ran around like a doofus at the local shopping mall, looking at the ground all the merry while, until I ran straight into the mall's security guard. He yelled at me, though I was too surprised to be frightened. And when I first read verse 9 of Joshua 4, which says that the twelve stones from the Jordan riverbed are still there "to this day," I thought that they were still there. The thing is, I knew that Joshua had been written a long time ago. My unfortunate, discombobulated brain couldn't wrap itself around the not-so-subtle point that "to this day" applied to the time when Joshua was written. How could someone who did so well in elementary school be so dense?

Although the twelve stones have probably since disintegrated into their constituent elements, we know about them because the Israelites followed Joshua's advice: they told their children about the stones and momentous event they represented (verses 6-7, 21-24). I suppose it would be a lot more convenient if kids popped out of the womb with the ability to function independently. But parents have the responsibility to teach them, guide them, and instill in them the moral compass that will serve as the bedrock of their decision-making process. And a big part of that is teaching the importance of history, providing knowledge that will inform the next generation to vote for--or even create--policies that will shape their lives. Of course, that's all easy for me to say because I'm not a parent. Yet.

I apologize if this post has become too didactic, but it started out pretty frivolous, so I guess it balances out in the end.