I have been attending the same church since I was in the first grade, and it continues to play an integral role in my life. The church is huge, with over 2,500 members, and the youth department is often short-staffed. It is for this reason that when I asked if any help was needed in the youth department, I was immediately shoved into a classroom by myself (with zero instructions or directions of what was expected of me).

I love children, and I am typically very good at handling large groups of them, but I felt incredibly unprepared to face thirteen first grade boys who had been without any supervision for the past four minutes (which, in child-time, is enough to spill Cheetos everywhere, draw a squiggly mustache on your buddy, and take over the world).

That was two years ago, and I am now eighteen years old and a very savvy teacher of the third-grade boys’ Sunday school class, much to the relief of the coordinators and directors. Many people have a lot of trouble with this age group, but I, for some reason, seem to have a knack for wrangling tiny hyperactive humans and am usually able to get them to participate and even be interested in whatever lesson is being introduced that week.

A few weeks ago, the Bible lesson was over the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. This is often a very tricky lesson, especially with younger students, because of its graphic and complicated content. I had just been going over the story and essential elements with the boys when I had a kid (my favorite kid, by the way: his name is Graysen and his twin brother Kobi is an absolute menace) ask me why people spat on Jesus as he carried his cross up the slopes of Golgotha. I told him that it was because they didn't know any better, and that they thought Jesus was a liar and a bad person.

“They thought they were doing the right thing,” I remember saying, aware of how strange such a concept might be to a bunch of eight and nine year olds. Graysen then looked at me and asked if that is what all mean people are like, if they all think they are just doing the right thing. By now, most of the other boys had tuned into the conversation. The innocence and openness of their expressions was almost painful to look at.

Instead of facing them all, I focused just on Graysen. I looked at him and said, "I guess sometimes they think they are right, and other times they aren't really thinking at all. They’re just doing whatever they feel like, without thinking about or honoring the other person like you are really supposed to."

Another student, Austin, then asked, "So what about the people my uncle was fighting in the bad country?"

For the barest moment, I was genuinely confused about what Austin was talking about. The next moment felt as though an overly enthusiastic vacuum decided to suck all of the air out of the room. I stared at this skinny third grader, and I really didn't know what to say.

Being a teacher in the face of such a question is terrifying mainly because I don’t know this kid's parents; for all I know, they advocate fighting against all Islamic culture and immigration, and maybe they wear aluminum hats to block the radio signals sent down by aliens. I already had blue hair, a very visible tattoo, and multiple piercings, and I didn't want to say something that Austin would relay to his mom and dad to give them yet another reason to think, "This church has crazy liberal teenagers teaching my son to love evil people, we can't let him come back." The last thing I wanted to do was cause Austin to be withdrawn from my classroom because I said something his parents didn’t agree with.

At the same time, I felt like it was my duty as the teacher to tell him that the people his uncle were fighting only made up a small percentage of that country, and that there is no such thing as a bad country. I wanted to say that sometimes, ideas have power and desperate people get brainwashed and blinded by ideals that are wrong and evil.

I felt like I needed to tell Austin that, despite all of the wrongs that are committed, those people are probably not completely evil. Austin, and every other boy in that class, was too young to have realized that everything is relative and that just because someone else believes something different or lives in a different culture doesn't doesn’t make them evil, because different does not mean wrong.

They hadn’t yet discovered that horrible things have been done in the name of Christianity and we can't afford to look at our own systems, cultures, and religions through a rose colored glass, and that we can't believe everything we hear because that is a formula that leads to the behavior of the people his uncle is supposed to be fighting. These boys didn’t know that everyone in the world, including each of them and Austin’s uncle and even myself, has done mean, wrong, evil things without a second thought. They didn’t yet understand that people make mistakes and mess up, and that those mistakes can cause nations to fall and cemeteries to fill with the bodies of the innocent.

I wanted him, and all of my third grade boys, to understand as soon as possible that the world is shown to us in very skewed ways and that we will never know the full picture, and that is why we are not God. I wanted them to all understand that everyone is good and evil at different points in our lives, and that we have to love everyone and show that love to everyone anyways, even when logic dictates that we put them on death row.

I wanted to tell them that Hitler was a vegetarian and an artist and was good with kids, and that my brother and I left bruises on each other when we were younger and fought each other, and I made my best friend cry in the 5th grade, and told a boy who trusted me that he wasn't worth my friendship and I didn’t really care about him. I wanted them to understand that there is a galaxy of possibility in every moment and person, and that only God is big enough to see all of those infinite universes and that is why he is the judge, jury, and executioner, while we are just viewers hearing one word of an infinitely complex and overwhelming story.

I wanted them to know that, and so much more. I considered all of this, and looked around the small yellow-painted classroom, searching for the answers. All I could see was large eyes staring at me from guileless faces, looking at me as though my eighteen years of experience had led me to the key to the universe. There I sat, at the head of our snack table, and all I could do was look at him and say, "I think they are the same way, but on a bigger scale."