When Our Children Choose What Is Right
I’ve been listening to Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. I’m still working through some faith issues in the book, so I’m not ready to endorse it quite yet.
I believe the criticisms of Christians in the book are criticisms of those who don’t follow Christ’s teachings, but I’m not sure about that yet. However, Book the Third, Chapter 16 has a wonderful conversation between a father and his daughter that I want to share with you.
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, a newly-rich couple, took the young woman Bella away from her home to live with them in a life of extreme luxury. When the husband in this couple allows riches to change him drastically for the worse; Bella, who had once been sorely tempted in that direction herself, decides to leave their home and return to her poor family.
She goes first to her beloved father at his place of employment, where she finds him alone after his day’s work. When her father finds her dressed, not in the fine clothes he has been used to seeing her in lately, but in the last dress that he bought for her, he wonders what has happened.
As father and daughter talk, he begins to realize the truth about why Bella has returned and what she has given up. Part of the playful relationship between the two includes them speaking about Bella herself in the third person. Her father calls her the “certain mercenary young person distantly related to myself” and Dickens refers to her father as “the cherub” because of his physical stature and sweet, childlike personality. Here is part of the pair’s conversation:
“Upon which,” pursued the cherub, “the certain mercenary young person distantly related to myself, having previously observed and mentioned to myself that prosperity was spoiling Mr Boffin, felt that she must not sell her sense of what was right and what was wrong, and what was true and what was false, and what was just and what was unjust, for any price that could be paid to her by any one alive? Am I leading up to it right?”
With another tearful laugh Bella joyfully kissed him again.
“And therefore—and therefore,” the cherub went on in a glowing voice, as Bella’s hand stole gradually up his waistcoat to his neck, “this mercenary young person distantly related to myself, refused the price, took off the splendid fashions that were part of it, put on the comparatively poor dress that I had last given her, and trusting to my supporting her in what was right, came straight to me. Have I led up to it?”
What a beautiful description of what we hope for in our children:
- Never to sell their sense of what is right and wrong, what is true and what is false, and what is just and unjust for any price that could be paid by anyone alive.
- To trust in our support in what is right.
For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
1 Peter 3:12