I have a five-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and they've both discovered that, well, how to put it, they've discovered I'm a theologian.

They wouldn't put it in those terms, but they know enough by now to know that dad spends his time talking to people about God.

And this has become an important part of the nighttime strategy of delaying bedtime

because, well, our oldest daughter has figured out,

for some reason this guy just stops dead in his tracks. I can slow everything down

if I start asking questions about God. And this has been incredible, and they're exactly

right. I'm a sucker every time. But we were watching The Little Mermaid the other day, and the

question a couple weeks ago was,

Dad, can Jesus be killed by a sea witch?

And I said no.

And of course the question next is,

why is that the case?

Well, I start giving answers.

None of them are pleasing.

And I finally, in exasperation, just say,

Josephine, the reason Jesus can't be killed by a sea witch,

quite apart from the fact that there are no sea witches,

is that he's eternal.

And my youngest daughter pops her head around the corner and starts crying.

It says, I don't want Jesus to be a turtle.

I'm telling you that, I told you that because you need to laugh. It's good for you to laugh. The positive psychologists, they tell us so.

I also bring up my children to say, as I was thinking about this talk and how I wanted to proceed and what I wanted to say, one word that came to mind was show and tell.

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