PureInsight | June 11, 2001
The following is a story that I read recently:
The Sunday school lesson for the day was about Noah's Ark, so the preschool teacher in our Kentucky church decided to get her small pupils involved by playing a game in which they identified animals.
'I'm going to describe something to you. Let's see if you can guess what it is. First: I'm furry with a bushy tail and I like to climb trees.'
The children looked at her blankly.
'I also like to eat nuts, especially acorns.'
No response. This wasn't going well at all!
'I'm usually brown or gray, but sometimes I can be black or red.'
Desperate, the teacher turned to a perky four-year-old who was usually good about coming up with the answers. 'Michelle, what do you think?'
Michelle looked hesitantly at her classmates and replied, 'Well, I know the answer has to be Jesus - but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me!'
When I first read the story, I laughed. "Aren't kids cute?' I thought to myself. Then something else occurred to me. In many of his books, Master Li mentioned how damaging "preconceived notions are to human beings, and how those "preconceived notions prevent us from seeing the truth. Even these preschoolers, who are supposed to be innocent and unspoiled, know what kind of answer the grown-ups expect to hear from them. They believe that they have to be wrong if their answers are different from "correct ones. Why is this? It is because they have been taught to think like that at such a young age.
As students of modern science, we grow up thinking that there is a "scientific explanation for every single thing around us. Even when we personally experience things that are "supernatural, we somehow come up with "scientific explanations to explain them away or brush them aside. How are we different from these kids? When high-level beings watch us from above, are they going to think, "Aren't those kids cute?'
