My Kids Do Not Notice The Flaw

She said she liked it.

That was the whole of it, and it was said in about a second and a half on the way past the door, and she meant it entirely.

And what you did with it was nothing. It went in, it was processed, and it came out the other side as a thing children say. She is nine. She has not looked at it properly. She would say that about anything.

Every one of those is a way of setting aside a piece of evidence that arrived from outside your own head.

And the same has happened with your wife, and with your brother when he was here in the spring, and none of them were being kind about it and all of them have been filed as being kind about it.

So here is where that leaves a man. He has one assessment he trusts, and it is his own, and it is the only one in the world that says there is something badly wrong with that room.

You are a father whose children have been telling the truth, and a defect nobody else can find has never once been the size you have been carrying.

Become as little children

There is a moment in Matthew where a dispute among grown men is interrupted by a child being set down in the middle of them.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3, King James Version)

Become as little children.

The context is adults arguing about rank, and the answer given is not an argument. It is a child, placed physically in the middle of the room, and an instruction to become like the thing standing there.

And that is a startling reversal of who is the authority. The men in that room had the standing, the experience and the vocabulary. The child had none of it and was set in the middle anyway.

You have a moment where a child way of seeing is treated as the reliable one, and an adult assessment has never once been automatically the more accurate. Matthew 18:3 puts the child in the middle rather than at the edge, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real instruction rather than a sentimental one.

And notice what kind of change is asked for. Except ye be converted. Turned around. It is not an adjustment or an improvement, it is a reversal of direction.

Which suggests that the adult way of seeing is not slightly off. It is pointed the other way, and needs turning rather than refining.

You were never going to refine your way to a better assessment, and a way of seeing that needs turning has never once been fixed by looking harder. The Spirit of God is the one who does the turning, and the written word asks for a conversion rather than an effort.

They are not being kind, they are reporting

So here is the practical claim, and it is the whole of this row.

A child looking at a room does not run a fault list. They are not incapable of seeing faults, they simply are not doing that job, because nobody has ever asked them to and it has not occurred to them that a room is a thing to be assessed.

What they report is what the room is like to be in. Which is, as it happens, the only question anybody ever actually needed answered about a room.

You have been given the answer to the real question and have never once accepted it, and a child report on a room has never once been a failure to look properly. Matthew 18:3 sets the child in the middle of the adults, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that testimony admissible.

And here is the filing error, which is the specific thing to interrupt.

Every reassurance you have received has been reclassified as kindness on arrival. That is a system with no way to take in good news, because any good news that comes in is relabeled before it can be counted.

You have a filing system that cannot accept a single piece of evidence, and a report reclassified as kindness has never once been able to be weighed. The Spirit of God is the one who interrupts a system like that, and Matthew 18:3 puts the least qualified person in the room at the center of the answer.

And one more, and it is what makes the assignment survivable. Believing them does not require agreeing with them.

You were never asked to stop seeing the corner, and taking somebody's answer as true has never once meant your own eyes were wrong. Matthew 18:3 asks for a turning rather than a denial, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it possible to hold a child's answer without arguing with it.

Ask one of them, and take the answer

Here is the assignment and the second half is where everybody fails.

Ask one of your children what they think of the room.

Plainly, with no lead in and no explanation. What do you think of that room. That is the whole question.

You have one child in this house who can answer a plain question, and asking has never once obliged anybody to be an expert. Matthew 18:3 sets a child in the middle of a roomful of adults, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while a father asks a nine year old a serious question.

And then take the answer as true and add nothing to it.

Do not say but look at the corner. Do not say they have not really looked. Do not explain what is wrong with it so they can see what you mean, which is the strongest temptation and is the whole failure in one move.

Say thank you, or say nothing, and let the answer stand exactly as given.

It will feel like getting away with something. It is not. It is a piece of evidence being allowed into a system that has been refusing evidence for a year, and one admitted piece is worth more than a hundred that got relabeled at the door.