He was a good boy (A true story)

By Curt Snider

ONCE THERE WAS A LITTLE BOY who did things that weren't very smart. He stole school-bus tickets. He and his friends stole cigarettes. He broke windows. He started fires that did a lot of damage. Once he beat up a friend of his while another boy held his friend so he couldn't get away. And he kicked a girl down some stairs. He always fought with his sister. He was arrested twice for breaking into a train station to fill balloons with water to drop on cars going under the train viaduct.

And he wasn't even ten!

The boy knew his papa loved him and must be very disappointed in him.

But he was a good little boy. He really was. He was quiet. Respectful. He just didn't think about what he was doing. You know—didn't quite get the idea of "consequences."

This little boy had been going to Sunday School from the time he was two. His mom was a Christian Scientist who took her kids to Sunday School each week. And the little boy really loved God. He felt God's presence, and knew God cared for him and healed him and protected him.

His parents never spanked or hit him for the things he did. Not even once. Even though they didn't like some of the stuff he did, they loved him. Never condemned him. His mom always told him he was "God's perfect child—now act like it!"

The boy's "papa" had been sent to military school early in his teen years because no one could control him. This was the same man who took his son home from the police station on the two occasions he was arrested for breaking and entering. Papa didn't go to church with the rest of the family, and he never spoke a word to his son about what the boy had done. Was he thinking about the things he had done 40 years earlier? Like father, like son?

But the boy knew his papa loved him and must be very disappointed in him. The boy vowed in his heart that he would never do those bad things again. But he did.

Meanwhile, his mother kept praying to see that the boy was God's child—spiritually perfect—good, honest, and kind—like God, like Love. After his papa passed away, when the boy was a teenager, he told his mom he didn't love her. He was crying when he said it and felt really bad about it. His mom comforted him saying, "That's not true. You are the expression of God, and God is Love."

Every one of those reckless things the boy did was turned around. How could that be? Did it have something to do with the fact that he was not considered a miserable sinner or an out-of-control delinquent, but rather was seen as the blessed child of God, made in His image and likeness? That was the kind of parenting the boy got. Somebody knew whose son he really was. As it says in the Bible, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17).

When the boy grew up and had a son of his own, he was continually surprised that his son was not at all like he had been. Why wasn't he? Is it because, as God said, "All souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine" (Ezek. 18:4). "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15).

God's parenting is shown in the higher and better idea of ourselves, which He gives. When we accept this corrected view, the "boy" of God's creating appears.

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