We’re in that section of commandments now that first graders are usually safe with. Commandment 5 turns out to be the easiest commandment for them to remember (“Honor your father and mother”), and also one of the easiest to break. After 5, though, 6’s “Thou shalt not kill” is a pretty easy one to write off for a first grader. None of our kids are sitting on death row. (As is the case with most things in Christianity, things are not as simple as they seem. The whole point of those commandments, after all, is to point us to a savior without whom we’d otherwise have no chance of satisfying the law. If one of the laws was truly a write-off, you’d then have the 9 “real” commandments plus that easy one anyone can follow, with savior or no.)

Explaining number 7 to a first grader turns out to be a whole heck of a lot of fun. Number 7, for those of us who weren’t indoctrinated in the law growing up (like me, who’s learned a lot of things through trying to explain it to first graders) is “Thou shalt not commit adultery”. Dangerous waters to be treading in, but you also don’t want to leave the kids completely mystified as to what this command is that we’ve just insisted that they memorize.

OK, I thought – kids understand marriage, two people, only married to each other. That’s how I’ll approach it. “Who here has thought about getting married when they grow up?” One hand, out of 20. Not going to get out it that easily. “We’re going to talk about the seventh commandment today, which is about adultery. We’ve worked very hard to figure out the best way to explain this, since kids your age generally aren’t as familiar with this command”. Connor raises his hand – “I know what the definition of adultery is!”. Instant teacher shutdown – ain’t no way this kid is going to give his definition to the class.

Needless to say, a very difficult lesson to teach. I THINK we made it through, being true to the lesson without being TOO enlightening. I still wish I could have heard the conversations in the kids’ families after church. “What did you learn about in Sunday school today?”