Private Thoughts Made Public

This evening my mother picked my son up from school and took him swimming. So I went round to mum’s house to see him for an hour or so before my ex came to pick him up. While I was there my mum said “Why don’t you ask your daddy that question you asked me earlier?” So he did. And this is what he asked: “Daddy, is God really real?”
Well…….
I could have referred him to the answer I gave to his last awkward question, which was a resounding “I don’t know” But instead I took the adult approach. I told him to listen to what everyone had to say about God and then he should make up his own mind. He goes to a Jewish school (as did I at that age) so he’s going to get a very baised opinion from there. I remember when I was about 12 someone asked a Rabbi at school where all the dinosaur bones came from, since dinosaurs are not mentioned anywhere in Genesis (to my recollection, anyway) and he got the answer “God put them there so that we could find them.” And ever since that moment I’ve taken all religion with a pinch of salt. I remember thinking at the time “That answer was a bit of a cop-out.” So to this day I still don’t know whether I believe in God or not. I go for a walk in the country and marvel at the beauty of the landscape, and I think the world is a fantastic place to be in. Then I end up buying Live Aid on dvd, and that makes me think that if the world really was such a wonderful place, then Live Aid wouldn’t have been necessary at all.
So I don’t think about it too much. I’m not a “big picture” kind of person. I’m a fairly solitary person who just tries to get to work without crashing his car, to get through the day without pissing the boss off, and to eat a home-cooked dinner in the evening without poisoning myself. Of course that’s not the be all and end all of my world, but i think you get the drift.
And I’m still looking for a good answer to my son’s other awkward question: “When I get older, am I going to die?” Maybe I should tell him to ask God…… as it is, I tell him that medicine is getting better all the time, and when he’s older, maybe people won’t die. Cop-out? You decide.