Omniscience

I've come to find out that at least one of my children does not believe that God knows everything.

I'm not sure I've ever given any explicit input on the topic, which kind of makes it all the more interesting. I'm not sure what to make of it.

You never know what kids are absorbing or not. Apparently this kid has not absorbed the prayer that's a regular part of our Sunday services and that happens to be one of my favorites:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid...

(btw: I imagine that prayer could be heard as threatening and intimidating, but I don't hear it that way. I find it a great comfort.)

This all came up when we were talking about a story in a book in which people hid something from God. I wondered out loud about why the people did this. I said, in a tone that left an opening for agreement or disagreement, that I thought God knew everything. My child said that no, he didn't. You can hide things from God by putting them someplace he doesn't know about. Like our garage.

I wonder how you know what places God knows about or not. I might have to ask about that tomorrow.

And yes, my child did identify God as he. In spite of my use of gender neutral terms for God, it seems both of my children have readily absorbed this important aspect of our religious and cultural patriarchy. But then if God doesn't know about things in our garage, maybe there are a lot of things he doesn't know about. Maybe he doesn't know what it means to be female. We'll have to see what we can do about that.