I’m four years old. Or five. Or seven. Or ten. One of those years where you’re small enough to be treated as a pet, a dog, but still perceptive enough for it to hurt.
We’re at church. Not church as in a cute building with a steeple, but a very small affair, a collection of families congregating in the gymnasium of a local high school. I can now remember that room with both a vagueness and specificity - the synthetic feel of the fabric flags me and the children played with during worship. The long, indeterminate flow of time as the worship raged on with the spirit, the preaching, and of course the prayer. Windows that seemed to stretch from the floor to a high vaulted ceiling. plastic tables you had to kick the metal bones of to collapse, chairs to folded and put away.
It was in one of those liminal times, as the families were dispersing and the goodbye conversations similarly stretched on forever, that I gathered up a little bit of courage within me to approach the pastor. In those days, I was an avid Bible-reader, aiming to get through all of Chronicles and Kings, and I needed to get something off my chest.
“So, um, there’s all these parts of the Bible where God says that he’ll punish the kids for stuff that their parents did… why is that?”
The pastor, a Texan with longer, flowy hair, held me by the shoulder. “You know, Paul. That’s a great question. Why does God do that?”
After a pause, he looks beyond me and smiles. Turning back, I see my father approaching, apparently curious about where I had ambled off to.
“You know, Mark,” said the pastor, “your son’s really got some great questions.”
The two men exchanged pleasantries, and discussed how great it was to have a child who asked questions, how important it is to build the faith. An unease grows within my body, starting from my shoulders and chest and working its way down into my stomach and legs. Was this question never to be answered? Would God punish me for the sins of my father and mother, my grandmother and grandfather? And worse still - was it happening already? Just about to happen?
One final dreadful note hit me as we left that sun-filled room and entered again into the van back home, seatbelts buckled in. That there was no opting out of this covenant with this punishing God, the God who demands and punishes and thinks itself entitles to eternal devotion. God was everywhere watching, criticizing, seeing, keeping check. And there was no leaving Him.