Gabe dashed upstairs and scanned the room. He found her at once.
The sight was cause for both mile-wide grin and mile-high shoulder sigh. Dinah, in typical lagomorph fashion, was lounging leisurely, ears flopped to the floor.
And in typical Gabe fashion, he tackled her.
And announced:
I think Dinah’s doing fine. She must have chomped up that balloon* really well.
And without a moment’s hesitation,
Thank you, Lord!
And then,
Dinah ate a balloon, was feeling fine… (Sung to the tune of “Bill Grogan’s Goat”)
And off he went, to Legoland in “The Downstairs.”
In his essay titled, “On the Transmission of Christianity,” C.S. Lewis explained that, if they exist, we ought use clear, simple answers to explain our problems. If today’s youth find it hard to figure their sums correctly and we know their schools stopped teaching arithmetic, we’d consider that the cause, not some “vaguer, larger explanation.” We need not think that, say, “gangster films had undermined the desire to get right answers” or “the influence of Einstein had sapped the ancestral belief in fixed numerical relations.” Stick with simple.
Likewise,
If the younger generation has never been told what the Christians say and never heard any arguments in defence of it, then their agnosticism or indifference is fully explained. There is no need to look any further… Having discovered that the cause of their ignorance is lack of instruction, we have also discovered the remedy.
There is nothing in the nature of the younger generation which incapacitates them for receiving Christianity. The young people today are un-Christian because their teachers have been either unwilling or unable to transmit Christianity to them…None can give what he does not possess himself.
All that to explain why I revel tonight.
Gabe’s knee-jerk thanks is proof. Train up a child. And, One generation will commend your works to another. And, Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. My seven year-old’s thanksgiving outburst is cause for my own.
And so I thank the Lord. Despite myself-my grumbling grumps and frustrated fumes-there’s still some transmission going on.
*In case you wonder: Gabe dumped water balloons on the floor just before dinner. Dinah picked green. Maybe she thought it was celery, he said. We talked about bowel obstruction and stomach acid and other grim digestive realities. He worried.
