Yesterday while having a late evening snack at a fast food restaurant, I happen to overhear the coverstation betweek a 6 or 7 year old boy and his parents. The boy was so full of energy and he was in the midst of conducting a mini quiz competition for his parents perhaps imagining the patrons to be the audience and me imagining having a front row seat to this event. The quiz master was in a hurry to shoot out all the questions he had prepared and I found it hard to think about the questions while busy witnessing this bundle of energy permeate the room.
As the questions kept flowing, one particular question caught my attention. The boy asked his two contenstants "How old is the earth?". As soon as I heard this, my focus completely changed from the food I was eating to this intriguing question and I was going through the list of possible answers I can come up with. The quiz master was getting irate with his contestants as they were busy talking about something they thought deserved more attention than the question posed to them perhaps not realizing that thinking about the answer to this question might change the way they live their lives. Finally after a stern warning from the kid, the mother answered "1 million years" and the father answered "100 million years". I was getting anxious about what the answer would be from the kid and he went on the say the following: "The earth was much older than the answers given and that it was older than any person". When I heard this answer, I had a sigh of relief since I was secretly hoping that he doesnt say it was 6000 years old, a number that a popular mainstream religion believes it to be. But as I was basking in this feeling of relief, came the shocker. The boy went on to add to his initial answer the following: "The earth was older than anyone, but younger than God and that God was the oldest". Before I could comprehend how a yound kid could come up with such an answer, I wanted to ask him a question myself... "How old is God then?" But since the rules of a quiz show doesnt premit a member of the audience to question the master, I decided not to indulge this idea any further.
But one thing I do hope for to happen sometime in the future is for the kid to pose the question to himself ..."How old is God?"
As the questions kept flowing, one particular question caught my attention. The boy asked his two contenstants "How old is the earth?". As soon as I heard this, my focus completely changed from the food I was eating to this intriguing question and I was going through the list of possible answers I can come up with. The quiz master was getting irate with his contestants as they were busy talking about something they thought deserved more attention than the question posed to them perhaps not realizing that thinking about the answer to this question might change the way they live their lives. Finally after a stern warning from the kid, the mother answered "1 million years" and the father answered "100 million years". I was getting anxious about what the answer would be from the kid and he went on the say the following: "The earth was much older than the answers given and that it was older than any person". When I heard this answer, I had a sigh of relief since I was secretly hoping that he doesnt say it was 6000 years old, a number that a popular mainstream religion believes it to be. But as I was basking in this feeling of relief, came the shocker. The boy went on to add to his initial answer the following: "The earth was older than anyone, but younger than God and that God was the oldest". Before I could comprehend how a yound kid could come up with such an answer, I wanted to ask him a question myself... "How old is God then?" But since the rules of a quiz show doesnt premit a member of the audience to question the master, I decided not to indulge this idea any further.
But one thing I do hope for to happen sometime in the future is for the kid to pose the question to himself ..."How old is God?"
