Kids say: Pray for Satan
When praying with others, it is my routine to ask for prayer requests before I pray. I ask if there is anything they want to thank God for or any supplication that they wish to make. I do this with my family as well. Usually there are requests for peace, comfort, wisdom, healing, you know, the usual requests. But sometimes the requests are…interesting. At dinner I asked Meagan (4yo) if there was anything she wanted pray about. She responded with one word,
“Satan.”
You should have seen the look on my wife’s face. A Mark Twain quote came to my mind:
Then Meagan giggled and backed out of it (she knew what she was doing) and said she wanted to pray for TV… sigh. At bedtime, Kaitlyn our 8 year old responded to this request by asking, “Has anyone actually tried praying for Satan? Maybe that would help him.”
Talk about awkward.
Here is a quick tip if your child asks you to pray for Satan. Don’t try to explain it away – you can’t win an argument with an 8 year old – and don’t get too deep theologically, simply pray and ask that God’s will be done…which includes Satan…that is what I did.
I think I survived.
When I was young, I had a very incomplete concept of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and of the original sin and the atonement. I remember wondering myself why Satan wouldn’t just “repent”. I even prayed that he might repent. I didn’t ask my parents, I just did it because in my young, logical mind, that would solve everything.
I believe there is a way to explain Satan, Angels, sin, and Salvation without getting “too theologically deep”. I thank you for demonstrating how we can delay a topic without lying (praying for God’s Will to be done). However, in my mind, the problem was really that I did not understand the Justice of God. Those days I still struggled over why God would let those who had never heard of him die and go to hell. We tend to teach young Christians from the moment back, rather than from Creation forward. My suggestion (coming from my own struggles with this issue as a child) is to work toward building the theology from Creation forward, so that a better understanding of sin and judgement might be developed. May the God bless you, your wife, and your little ones. Amen.
Thanks for the comment Faithful. I do try to move from creation forward with my kids, it is always an interesting conversation to have!