Angels of Death

As I worked in the garden, the twins buzzed around eager to "help". Really, I just wanted them out of the way. I told them to fill up their buckets with water, and to water all of my gardens. After about 10 minutes, I realized just how destructive the two of them could be with water! I asked them to come next to me and catch grubs.

Yup, grubs. We have tons of grubs. I have tried to get rid of them. Nothing works. Now, I am left to plucking them individually from the ground and killing them. Very gross. But the twins wanted to help.

Katie and Bethie got a purple Dora bucket and filled it half way up with water. I was told to drop the grubs into the bucket. The twins would then stir the water with sticks. Bethie would drop little pieces of grass in the bucket so the grubs would have something to eat, and Katie would drop rocks in hopes of sinking any grubs that were trying desperately to get out. Katie referred to her wee bucket as "The Killing Bucket".

I began to get tense. I really didn't like my sweet four year old twin girls taking such delight in killing. I told them that it was inappropriate to laugh at the poor grubs. That's when Bethie asked, "Is God happy that we are killing the grubs?".

What was I supposed to say? "Yup, God is thrilled that we are killing the bugs. In fact, that's why He made grubs, so we can torture and then kill them!"  Or, do I say, "No, God doesn't like us to kill anything. But I don't care what God thinks, go ahead and KILL THOSE GRUBS!"? Neither seemed entirely appropriate.

I ended up saying, "It's not good to kill anything. God is not thrilled, but He's not super angry. The bigger the animal, the angrier God gets. So, He's annoyed that we are slaughtering grubs, but he would be wicked angry if we killed a ... dog."

Bethie was horrified! She asked, "Who would kill a dog?! What else gets killed?".  Instead of itemizing all the things that one could possibly kill, I said "Watch out! The grubs are trying to get you!". And that put an end to our lesson in theology.