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@kate-flournoy has a lot of good points @anne-of-lothlorien. And @emma-flournoy is true about the stereotype. I think that the best way to write little kids is to give them great reasoning because to them everything is quite logical. They just have less understanding.
Also, something I’ve noticed is that little kids are pure evil. I’m serious.
Okay, not really. But kids tend to do many things for very bad reasons. Like they want attention or they covet or they hate too much or love obsessively (don’t you love run on sentences?).
That’s all I have for now.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
But kids tend to do many things for very bad reasons. Like they want attention or they covet or they hate too much or love obsessively (don’t you love run on sentences?).
@Mark-Kamibaya Older people do that sometimes too, though. Messed up ones. 😛@kate-flournoy Yes! I mean, my parents disciplined me a lot, and look how I turned out xD jk
@emma-flournoy You’re right. Adults and older kids do that too. We’re just better at hiding it 😉Read to explore worlds, write to create them.
@SleepwalkingMK absolutely. XD
@Emma-FLournoy @Mark-Kamibaya yes, and you know why older people do that too? They weren’t raised right as kids. They never came out of that ‘everything centers around me’ stage that kids go through because no one ever taught them better.@kate-flournoy @emma-flournoy @sleepwalkingMK @anne-of-lothlorien
We are better at hiding sin. And we sin because we have a sin nature. Not necessarily because we weren’t raised right. There are many adults who are horrible people but were raised in good homes. It’s kind of sad that I saw that from a young age. But parenting does impact kids in major ways.
Let me put it this way. Parents must try their hardest to be awesome parents. That’s what God wants. But the kids might turn out to be nasty people no matter what the parenting. If the parents actually parented well then they aren’t responsible. Kids, after all, have free will.
So don’t forget to put that in writing. Too many good kids in literature today. It’s kind of like the sinless Christian stereotype.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
@Mark-Kamibaya yes, that’s a much better way to put it. Great points.
And the sinless Christian stereotype… wow, don’t even get me started on that one. 😛
@kate-flournoy Please don’t. I’m already trying to stuff the anti-stereotype rage back into my body.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
Let me put it this way. Parents must try their hardest to be awesome parents. That’s what God wants. But the kids might turn out to be nasty people no matter what the parenting. If the parents actually parented well then they aren’t responsible. Kids, after all, have free will.
@Mark-Kamibaya Well, you’re right. 😛 I do think a child will be more likely to stay on the right track as an adult if he was raised correctly though. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 20:11What can be seriously nice is if a kid didn’t have good parents and discipline, and he turns out great anyway.
Yeah, that’s true. But there have been many examples of godly people with horrible kids. Adam literally walked with God and had a bad kid. David had Solomon (who was worse) and Solomon had Rehoboam (who was a bad king). Jehoram was a bad king but Jehoshaphat (his dad) was a good king. Modern examples include Billy Sunday and Jim Elliot. Their kids were bad. Well, Jim Elliot’s turned out good but he was an unsaved rebel for a long time.
Of course there were some kings who were good and had bad fathers. Like Hezekiah and Josiah.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
Agh, I know. *grimace* This might sound bad, but that’s a problem sometimes with kings and preachers especially—they’re so intent on shepherding their flock or country that they neglect the shepherding of their children.
Does it ever shock you that we have almost the whole book of Proverbs from Solomon, especially with all the stuff about discipline and adhering to parents in it, and Solomon was such an awful guy? And his kid? It’s beyond my comprehension how he could have written all that and lived so contrary to it.Whoops. @Mark-Kamibaya
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So, I have quite a few younger siblings (11 actually) so I should be able to add something. Except I forgot exactly what I was going to say. The biggest thing would probably be, as was already mentioned, children are egocentric. They see everything through the lens of their own experiences.
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@emma-flournoy Late reply. Sorry.
I think Solomon was that way because of David. I don’t know of any biblical support for this, but the Bible does record instances where someone’s sin was so bad that their kids suffered because of it. I think Solomon suffered in that way. Not being heretical. That’s just my personal opinion.
From a more biblical standpoint, have you ever read Ecclesiastes? You’ll understand Solomon (the proposed author of that book) a whole lot more. He’s a guy who realizes the emptiness of life. He has lived his life to the fullest (see below) and yet still came out empty. And the thing with Solomon is that he wasn’t like an evil evil guy. Not like Israel’s kings. He’s technically a “good” king. The way the Bible put it sounds like he was lustful and tolerant.
Lustful because he had a lot of wives. Now many Bible scholars say that he had that many wives because he had lots of treaties with other nations. Those treaties were usually sealed with marriage. But 700 wives and 300 concubines? I don’t think those were all treaties. Now what’s interesting is that Solomon is like David on steroids in that David had like ten wives. Solomon had ten times a hundred. That’s where my viewpoint of David’s judgment being Solomon’s less than stellar reign comes from (see above). Because there’s no indication that David was punished for his sin of polygamy. I mean David was kind of a bad dude if you think about it. Yet he was a man after God’s own heart.
Tolerant because he sacrificed to other gods. I don’t think Solomon actually worshiped those gods. The Bible makes it sound like he just built temples for those other gods because of his wives. He was tolerant. And because he was tolerant that was considered just as bad as worshiping them. And here’s the scary thing. Apply that to today. Now how tolerant should we be? Loving, yes. Always remember that. But where is the line drawn?
That’s the end of my rant. It might take a couple of read-throughs to actually understand my rambling mind, but I hope you get my drift.
Oh, and Ecclesiastes needs to be preached on more. Ask your pastor or parents about that book and try to spark conversation about it. Intense conversation. It’s in the Bible for a reason.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
@Mark-Kamibaya Wow, that’s a lot of great thinking material. I like it. I’m pretty sure I get your drift…lemme see if I can give a coherent reply.
Yes, I have read Ecclesiastes, on my own and with the family and discussion. I understand what Solomon puts out there, and his thoughts on how fruitless life is. But somewhere in Ecclesiastes, he comes to the conclusion that there’s nothing better than for us to enjoy life and the fruit of our labor. (Ecclesiastes is confusing in parts though, because life isn’t fruitless. Our purpose in life is to bring glory to God. That is NOT useless. Thoughts?)
The difference in my mind between David and Solomon is that David repented of his sin—Solomon didn’t. (The biggest black spot on David’s record to me it the whole Bathsheba kerfuffle. He repented of that. I guess I don’t think as much about the actual polygamy aspect with David; I suppose having ten wives is no better than ten hundred though… Tell me if I’m wrong, but was there some point where polygamy wasn’t condemned by God? I don’t know why I’d think that, but I seem to remember having heard it somewhere.) I don’t like David all that much either, but he repented, so it’s not forever awful.
I don’t think of Solomon so much as being tolerant, and thus doing what his wives want for their sake, so much as that he was so influenced by his wives that he actually started believing as they did.
God specifically told him not to have foreign wives not because that would be more than one wife (maybe He meant that too, but it wasn’t the main point), but because He didn’t want Solomon to be influenced about their false gods. So Solomon goes and disobeys God by having foreign wives anyway, and exactly what God said would happen happens—they influence him, and he starts worshiping their false gods. So he sins twice. All this in my mind makes Solomon an evil evil dude. 😉
If Solomon had repented of all that, and gone back to being Godly as he was in his earlier life (I think?), then I wouldn’t continue to think he was awful. When someone repents, they can be forgiven.
I never thought he was just tolerant—I though he actually was corrupted to their view. BUT! 😀 You’ve made me think I should go do some more digging around in the Old Testament, just to get a clearer view.
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