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Seeking Words of Wisdom
Where do you turn for answers?
I still remember kneeling on a hard wooden chair, being quizzed by the nun teaching the CCD class. The Sister tapped a wooden ruler against her desk as she asked me, “How do we know that God loves us?” She continued the tap-tap of that ruler, which I knew would be used as a weapon if I answered incorrectly.
Seven years old, a well-behaved child, fearing the smack of that ruler against my out-stretched hand, my mind fruitlessly searched for an answer. I finally stammered, “I don’t know.”
S-M-A-C-K. The ruler came down on my hand.
“He loves us because He created us in His image and likeness,” the nun shouted at me, because that was the “correct” answer, at least according to the CCD handbook. If I had simply repeated the answer from the handbook, I would have been spared the humiliation and punishment.
Even as a young child, I wasn’t comfortable with simply accepting someone else’s words. Something inside of me wanted to debate that nun. At the least, I expected some further discussion on the question.
I didn’t realize at that tender age, that I wasn’t supposed to try to think independently. I was supposed to blindly trust that the answer to such an existential question could be found in a child’s CCD handbook.
