Backseat Conversations : Part 6

January 25, 2010 in Backseat Conversations, Kids by Sara | 4 comments

On our way back from church Sunday morning, I looked back to see Elena reading her bible.

How sweet, I thought, and turned my attention back toward the road.

Then she says, “Mama, what is semen?”

Thinking I surely had not heard correctly, I asked her to repeat it.

Which she did.

So still hoping against hope she was just mispronouncing something else, I asked her to read the sentence to me.

And straight out of Genesis, Elena read the following verse.

May you be blessed by it as we were.

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother.  Genesis 38:9

As you can imagine, this required some explanation on our part.

And here I’ve been worried about what they might see on the Disney channel.  When all along I should have been worried about the Old Testament.

I told her that perhaps she should turn to another passage.

When I looked back again, she had her bible open to Leviticus.

Great.

  1. Paula on January 25, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    OH MY GOSH!! That is hilarious!!

  2. the domestic fringe on January 25, 2010 at 8:31 pm

    HA! It’s dangerous when our kids start reading their Bibles. I may rip that page out…just for a few more years. ;-)

    -FringeGirl

  3. Jim on January 26, 2010 at 7:17 pm

    You better start worrying how you’re going to tackle Song of Salomon when they find it. :-)

    Seriously, that passage in Genesis is a great chance to how seriously God takes disobedience and the using of others for, ahem, physical gratification.

    I’ll try to be brief.

    The ‘levirate’ custom (later given by God as part of the Law, Deut 25:5-10) was that a brother should assume the duties and responsibilities of his deceased brother, to include helping his brother’s widow have children to carry on his brother’s name (and provide for their mother.)

    Onan was disobedient, irresponsible, and a pig. Rather than be obedient to his father and accept the responsibility he’d been given, when he went to Tamar he would, ahem again, get things started with her, but then ‘end early.’ Worse than publicly refusing his responsibility, he appeared to accept it, but only used the situation (and Tamar) for his own gratification.

    Congratulations Onan, you’re now immortalized.

    Seems to me, if the situation arises again, there are all kinds of good lessons in there for your girls.

    Oh, and about Song of Solomon; don’t say I didn’t warn you. :-)

  4. Pam on January 28, 2010 at 8:52 am

    Sseriously? I just gave my computer a bath with the coffee I had to spit out from laughing.