It just slipped out...

Pin It I stood between the two boys on the playground. It was obvious that they were still upset with each other, and that’s when it slipped out.

I didn’t mean for it to…it just did.

“Would Jesus do that?” I couldn’t believe it, the second the words left my mouth, something inside of my brain seemed to register what I’d just said.

Goodbye separation of church and state.

Well, it wasn’t as if I’d planned on saying it, right? I had been almost tricked into saying it, really. As I’d listened to the two boys complain about each other, and why they’d each done what they did, the conversation kept coming back to: “Well, during Scouts at the church…” and “At church he said this when we were in Scouts…” There was so much talk about church going on that I couldn’t help saying what I did, right?

Well, now that I’d said it I thought, “Holy cow! What do I do now?” Well, there was nothing which could be done at this point other than to run with it…

“Well, Joey?” I asked again. “If Jesus were here would he have been making fun of Sam when he couldn’t throw the ball? Could you see him yelling, ‘Hey, Sam! You’re a loser head! You can’t do anything right!’?”

Joey looked at me with wide eyes. “Well, no. Jesus wouldn’t do that.”

I turned to Sam. “And Sam,” I said slowly. “If Jesus were here would he start pushing people around and hitting them?”

How could you argue with that? Who can argue with Jesus? That’s right…nobody. Nobody can mess with the Big J!

Sam also looked to the ground, as if wishing it would swallow him up. “No, Jesus wouldn’t do that to anybody.”

“Well,” I said, feeling like I were once-again a primary, instead of school teacher. “If Jesus wouldn’t do that stuff, why do you two do it to each other?”

Both boys looked at me, each other, and then back at the ground.

“I wonder what I should do,” I said, eyeing them both. “It would be easy for me to just give you both an action slip and then be done with it. However, I don’t know if that would solve the problem. After all, you two would still go on secretly hating each other, wouldn’t you?”

The boys stared blankly at me as if into an oncoming headlights of a Mack Truck.

“So you tell me what to do. Do you want to work it out, or should I just give you each an action slip?”

More silence.

“Well, it looks like I get to choose.” I said. “I guess it’s action slips for both of you.”

Sam looked devastated, but Joey replied, “But Jesus wouldn’t do that either.”

Touché

Okay, I have to admit, I made up the last three lines; mostly because it was a lot funnier than what really happened. As it turns out the boys decided to work it out, and then be “sort of” friends after that. However they did promise not to be mean to each other anymore…this was fine with me because I really didn’t want to be dealing with this problem in the first place.

We ended the peace talks with vows to be better toward each other. At this point I gave the ole’ “you-guys-can-do-better” pep-talk. We ended with a group hug, and then went back to our classes all feeling a little more loved and understood.

After all, that’s what Jesus would have done.