One thing that has struck me as interesting as I get older is how very differently children often perceive things that their parents have told them, or how they internalize or interpret things differently from what their parents may have meant. When I bring up some things now to my mother, that made such a big impression on me as a child, she doesn't even remember saying them, and claims she doesn't know where got my interpretations of certain things from.

My mom was a Bible story reader when I was a child. Every single night she would read us our bedtime story, which was always a Bible story. I can remember how shocked I was when I realised that I wasn't an Israelite. The Israelites were the good guys in the Bible, the ones who followed the one and only true God. I had no idea at all that we were Gentiles, and so, for Old Testament purposes, were the bad, pagan people.

I think in all honestly, she read stories to us, not to inform us but to get us to go to sleep. But I was hooked on every word. Stephen King - years later - couldn't have told me a better story than my mom telling me about the story of the creation, and of Noah and his ark and God punishing the Egyptians with the plagues until they let 'my people go.'

And then in addition to that, in Sunday School we were taught a children's version of the Mennonite Martyrs, as written about in The Martyrs' Mirror, which included the story of Dirk Willems, the story that has always stuck with me. That was the standard as children that we were given to live up to and the discussions in Sunday School, even at a very young age, seem to me to always centre around the theme of would you be brave enough to do that for the sake of Jesus?

I could imagine nothing greater to aspire to in life than to be a martyr. But of course, it wasn't just the stories of the martyrs of long ago. Since I was the grandchild of Mennonites who escaped during the Revolutionary years of the Soviet Union, martyrdom was never seen as far off or something that happened long ago. There were terrible choices to be made then, for those Mennonites between 1917 and the 20s (my grandfather was 17 when he and his brothers and sisters and their widowed mother left in 1924).

His father had died of typhus. My grandfather's family were wealthy landowners, kulaks, as they called them, prior to collectivization, with many servants and large houses. My grandfather attended a private school and expected to become a doctor. It is not unlike if our lives today would be turned upside down, and we went from taking everything for granted, to having nothing.

Some Mennonites, in order to protect themselves and their families, did take up arms. Others did not. I am a pacifist and I hope that I would in a situation where my life is being threatened, rather allow my life to be taken than to take another's life, but I think that no one can say that until they have been there. Many Mennonites in fact, remained true to their pacifist beliefs, and literally stood by and watched their entire families being slaughtered in front of their eyes.

In many of the stories passed down, these more current martyrs, proclaimed with their last breaths their faith and belief that that day they would be with Jesus and forgave their murderers, like Jesus did.

My grandfather was that kind of a man. I am sorry that he died before I got to really know him. The generation that went through those things did not like to talk about those things at all and there are many things about him that I learned only after his death from others of his generation who had been there.

But I did know and hear enough from bits and pieces of conversations here and there that he was absolutely pacifist and that he had witnessed terrible things. I was always in awe of him because of that. Because he had been where, in my mind, it is the place of the Christian to be - or to be prepared to be - to be face to face with death and still not back down. You are right. Forgiveness of that kind is not easy, it is not a cheap grace that says, 'aw, forget it.'

And even if a person thinks that they could be pacifist facing a direct threat to their own life, can a person hold out if their child, their wife is threatened? Families are the weak spots in everyone who loves. Which every torturer knows. That is what was used as a weapon against the early martyrs - they didn't flinch when their own lives were threatened. They flinched when the lives of their children were threatened. The Soviets did that as well, even later, when they allowed people to visit family in western countries, but they only allowed it if the person visiting, for example, Canada, had strong family ties back in the Soviet Union. They knew that if a person had no ties, they would never return to the Soviet Union. (We had family from the Soviet Union visiting under those circumstances, including my grandfather's sister, who had not been able to flee in time with the rest of the family).

And the person visiting Canada knew what would happen to his or her family if he or she did not return.

As to baptism, the idea behind the Anabaptist (which means re-baptizers since they rebaptized people as adults who had been baptised as infants) was that a child cannot know what he is committing to any more than an infant can. A child under the influence of his parents and community and culture does not have any independent thought. Does not make an independent decision. He or she may have their child-like faith but they only have that because of their parents.

As an example, a six year old Buddhist child does not one day announce he believes in Jesus Christ and wants to become a Christian if all he has ever known is a Buddhist home and community. So there is no free will involved, nor knowledge or what he is committing himself to. That doesn't invalidate a child's natural beliefs. But any parent knows that when a child wants to be a fireman and a policeman and an astronaut and an actor when he grows up, that they are not going to be all those things, and probably not any of those things. So it is with children professing Christianity.

I think you can be a Christian child in the same way you can be a Buddhist child or a Hindu child or a Jewish child or a pagan child but most Christian parents never would give a six or a seven year old child a choice of faiths. An adult has a choice to make, even if he or she has no particular knowledge of other faiths.

But Mennonites don't (or at least not the denomination I grew up in) believe that there is an age of accountability for children. Children are children. Some children are naturally wiser than others or more spiritually inclined. But no 6 year old or 7 year old or 10 or 11 year old etc, is going to hell.

Even at 18 - just because the law says that you are then considered an adult and are legally entitled to certain rights such as voting, it doesn't mean that people reasonably expect an 18 year old to have the self-control of a forty year old. And I don't believe that God doesn't take into account, regardless of how bad the behaviour is, the different reasoning skills of an 18 year old who has lived, shall we say, a not so good life versus a forty year old who has lived a life similar to the 18 year old.

I don't think that there is a definite age of reason. Too many other things enter into it, including socio-economic background. And I believe that God takes all of these things into consideration. And I believe that salvation can be lost. Doesn't Jesus say something along the lines of it is better to lose your life than your soul? I can't remember the verse exactly.

I had more thoughts but I have a cat demanding attention from me right now so it is time for me to see to one of God's other creatures.

Layla