Crayon Shower

My children and my students are always teaching me new lessons.  A few weeks before school was out, my female students taught me another great lesson about the nature of man. They did this using my crayons. It was just a few days before the state exams, and I was trying to remediate my kids. One of the techniques I was using required the kids to color the sentence parts. I had the students in groups. While I was working with one group of students, I looked up to see crayons flying across my room.

Needless to say, I was very angry. I would have thought my male students were guilty. However, I discovered that it wasn’t my boys. It was my girls who had decided to throw crayons across my room. When I confronted the guilty girls, each one of them lied. They blamed a male student in class who had been in a lot of trouble all year. My girls told me this lie with honest faces. I couldn’t believe it. All of the girls had got together and decided to lie. They were willing to get this young man in trouble just to save themselves from punishment.

When I told them that I knew the truth and asked them why they did it, the girls simply said that they wanted to have a little fun. They also stated that they lied to keep from getting in trouble. I was very angry because they were willing to let this young boy be kicked out of school because of something that they had done. It was then that I recognized the nature of man.

We are such wrecked creatures. How often we lie and cheat our fellow man just to get ahead. I wondered did these girls learn lying from their parents or did they get it from themselves. It has been said that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”.

What does the Bible tell us about this situation?

Exodus 20: 16: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

Exodus 23:7 : Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

Hosea 10:13-14: You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice, You have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your way, in your numerous warriors

Matthew 12: 36-37: But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

Proverbs 18: 21: Death and life are in the power of the tongue

Lying is not okay with God. And, why these girls decided to join together to lie on another innocent student, I don’t know. That is why it is so important to teach our children the difference between right and wrong. It is important to teach them to love and respect others.