c. 2000 Religion News Service

MOBILE, Ala. _ They don’t have divinity degrees, and they’re relatively unschooled when it comes to the particulars of doctrine and liturgy.

But make no mistake _ Mobile’s kids know about God.

Crayons in hand, they can show you what God looks like.

If asked, they’ll tell you where God is.

They’re pretty sure what God’s up to as well, rattling off divine activities as easily as they can say the alphabet.

“This is God,” says 8-year-old Andre French, indicating the squiggly, royal blue figure he’s just outlined on a gleaming white sheet of legal paper. “He loves us all and he saved us.

“And he hates the devil.”

Just so there’s no confusion on that point, Andre creates a small, pointy-headed figure with a magenta crayon, traces a circle around him and draws a line through it. Near the bottom of the page, he writes, “God Loves us ALL.”

It’s that simple.

For years, religion scholars and psychoanalysts alike have studied children’s depictions of God to learn how youngsters develop spiritually. Guided by such information, some have determined religious instruction; others have speculated how the drawings reflect children’s religious, social and ethnic environment.

In the end, many marvel at what they learn.

“Kids do have their own theology,” says Candace Spitzer, director of children’s and families’ ministries at Dauphin Way United Methodist Church in Mobile. Children’s faith is pure, simple and genuine, Spitzer says, and it can provide adults with much instruction. Looking at God through a child’s eyes, she says, “brings us back to where Jesus wanted us to be.”

Repeatedly, Scripture admonishes believers to seek spiritual guidance from children, says Shirley K. Morgenthaler, editor of the 1999 text “Exploring Children’s Spiritual Formation: Foundational Issues” and distinguished professor of education and coordinator of graduate studies in early childhood education at Concordia University in River Forest, Ill.

“The Bible, especially the New Testament, but also the Old Testament, talks about the ability of children to understand the mysteries of God more readily than adults do,” Morgenthaler says. “In both Old and New Testaments, the message of the importance of children is very, very important. That message was completely countercultural because the concept in the Greek and Roman world was that children were subhuman until they could reason, about the age of 7.”

At the time Scriptures were written, Morgenthaler says, the message to the people of those times was that “children are a whole lot more important than the common understanding in your culture says. They have a lot more to offer us as an example for how we relate to God.”

Recent conversations with more than a dozen Mobile children at First Baptist Church of Mobile’s Child Development Center and Toulminville Warren Street United Methodist Church Child Day Care Center offer examples of how believers might relate to the divine. They reveal strong faith, stamped with humor and reverence.

This is their theology, in crayon and quotation:

_ John Brunson, 5: “Here’s God. This is his bedâÂ?¦.He sleeps at night. When he goes to bed, he sleeps with his eyes open because he wants to see everything.”

_ Briana Bumpers, 6: “God has power. He makes rain. He makes thunder. He makes tornadoes. And he can get people. When he wants people to die, he arranges for them to die. When he’s ready for them, he lets them die.”

_ Byron Bumpers, 10: “If I need something, I’ll pray for it and he’ll answer my prayers. He gave me a mother. He gave me a father. He gave me everything, really … He gave me shelter. He gave me people to care for me.”

_ Nicholas Casperson, 5: “God (third figure from the left) made these people. He’s big. He made the clouds, persons. He made eyes. He made legs. He made all things. He made all animals, like birds.”

_ Mary Hannah Farnell, 6: “He’s standing on the cloud and he’s shining light so he can have light, (and) so the people can have light so they can have morning.”

_ Briana Firstley, 7: “Those (pyramids on right and left) are the things that God created. They sticked (God) him to this. I think he died.”

_ Reginald Lewis, 7: “God made everything. God makes people and animals and water and fishes and sharks and dolphins.”

_ Alexus Lockett, 6: “He gives us everything we need.”

_ Brooke Poellnitz, 8: “(Mary is) Jesus’ mama. (God) gives us everything we want. (Jesus) died on the cross for us.”

_ Erin Phillips, 8: “That’s God because he is shining light, and he’s on a cloud. He’s in the castle _ it’s a cloud castle. He has a kingdom in heaven. My Sunday School teacher told me that (there are) diamonds and rubies (in heaven). And she said there’s streets of gold. And the yellow part is the gold street.”

_ Jeremy Williams, 8: “This is God hanging on the cross … On the third day, he rised. His name (is) in the clouds. He prays for me every night. He gives us some things, (like) peace.”

KRE END CAMPBELL