A 5 year-old conviction

Lately we've been teaching Carson why stealing is wrong. He was involved in an incident at school recently where some matchbox cars that didn't belong to him ended up in his pocket. Normally, Carson says that "school is stupid" so we tried to reverse his thinking and explain that school is cool that stealing is stupid and "not cool". Well, today on the way home from school, Carson noticed some bags of toys in the back seat. He recognized that the toys were ones from his toybox and his room. He asked Jonathan why his toys were in the bags so Jonathan explained that these were toys he didn't really play with anymore and there were many children who didn't have any toys. Carson thought about it for a few minutes then said to Jonathan, "But Dad, that's stealing". Jonathan had to hold back the laughter and explain that it wasn't stealing. When Jonathan told me about it, I had to laugh because I never did ask Carson if I could take his toys so I suppose in some sense he was right.

Then today while Jonathan was working Carson came into the room and picked up my bible and starting pretending to read from it. Jonathan said all of a sudden Carson made the statement, "slow obedience is no obedience". Jonathan had to do a double-take and then asked Carson where he heard that. Carson said his teacher at school told it to him. Jonathan and I were both impressed with what the teacher is teaching as well as the fact that he remembered what the teacher said. We were also both convicted by what the statement means for each of us.