Sin for Six-Year-Olds

Angels have beautiful clothes made of pink and lavender nylon, even the latest rockets cannot penetrate Heaven, and the Devil is full of uranium. These are some of the up-to-the-minute theories of small-fry theology turned up in a survey of sixto ten-year-olds conducted by Professor Theophil Thun, 59, of the Padogogische Akademie (Teachers College) in Paderborn, Germany. Professor Thun was less interested in theology than in charting the juvenile sense of sin, and his findings indicate that at six as well as at 60, sin often seems whatever is most fun-such as "scuffling and kicking and throwing stones" and "sticking out my tongue at people."

Grave sins cited by German second-graders most often included throwing away food or money or "making fun of God." But one moppet, asked to describe a small sin, disconcertingly replied, "Playing cowboy and taking Father's rifle and saying there's no bullet in it but there is and you shoot somebody dead."

Nine-and ten-year-olds tended to list murder as the prime example of serious sin, but several sophisticates cited "committing adultery." In this age-group, serious sinning took in a wide range of behavior, from "throwing snowballs at Granny" to "pushing children in front of cars"; from "trampling flowers" to "setting fire to a hospital or a big old folks' home."

Summing up his survey, Professor Thun rates aggressive and destructive tendencies as first in the child's garden of evil, followed by thievery, sex ("pulling down your pants in front of other children"), sacrilege ("calling God a dope"), disobedience and, lastly, that mysterious entity known as Grown-Up Sins.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.