Religious Debate

For Erik's birthday, Sven picked out a card that had a picture of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. He asked about the picture, so I gave him a quick overview of reincarnation.

A few weeks later Sven came up to me with tears in his eyes and said "Daddy said Addis is dead. Is Addis really dead?" When I said yes, Sven said "Maybe Addis is something else. Maybe he's a cow." Sven seemed to feel comforted by the thought of Addis being around in some form or another and the tears stopped.

A couple of weeks ago, I took Sven and his friend Thomas to see a movie. On the way to the movies, Sven and Thomas had a huge argument about what happens when somebody dies. Sven insisted that the person comes back as another being. Thomas said "when you're dead, you're dead forever." Finally after some heated discussion, I said "It's OK to believe different things." Thomas concluded by saying very loudly "I'm right AND you're right."