Phone Wars

Do you own a cell phone? With no scientific survey to back me up on this, I would hazard a guess that about 80% of those who might read this page do, indeed, have such a device.

Apparently, kids these days are picking up on this fact! They are learning early.

I spent last Saturday evening in the one-year-old room of our church's nursery. In one of those moments where grace gets the better of you (or, I should say, gets the worst of you), I took a proverbial deep breath on Friday when my daughter Anna, who is responsible for scheduling volunteers in those classrooms, was letting us know that she was a little stressed by the difficulty she was having finding help over the holiday weekend, and I offered to fill in. Not that doing so was some great sacrifice, but hanging out with a bunch of little kids all at once who are not related to me is not normally something I seek out. My niece Tara, who was up visiting for the weekend, was also recruited, and so Tara and I, with a little help from Anna and others, spent an hour and a half playing with toddlers.

Amongst the toys with which the one-year-old room was stocked were two plastic, battery-operated toy cell phones. While kids variously occupied themselves sliding down the plastic slide, riding the plastic rocking horse (they certainly don't make those like the one I had as a kid), looking at books, or pushing various wheeled contraptions around the room, the toy cell phones were without a doubt the hottest items going. I believe I saw almost all of the children at various times walking around with one of them pressed to the ear, clearly demonstrating that they knew exactly how that little device was to be used.

But that wasn't all they demonstrated, because often times one child's play time with one of those phones was abruptly cut short by another child simply grabbing it out of the hands of the first. Tears were usually the result, and I am a poor referee of such toddler disputes.

There are those who make the argument that human beings are by nature basically good. It's hard to think those folks have spent much time with groups of little children. Where does that unabashed, unashamed ability to simply take what one wants away from another, without thought or care for the consequences toward that person, come from? I rather doubt that any of those children's parents have set about deliberately teaching their kid to be self-centered. It comes quite naturally.

No, their parents and the church will spend exorbitant amounts of time and energy training them to be considerate of others, to not act out of their own selfish desires, to be thoughtful and giving human beings. And for the most part, they will succeed. At least, they will succeed in bringing about some measure of control over that innate need. They will never get rid of it, however.

There is only one thing that can do that.

"Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4