DADDY, WILL YOU KILL ME?” By Femi Adekunle

“DADDY, WILL YOU KILL ME?”

By Femi Adekunle

 

 

When I was in Lagos, I had an extremely very busy week in and out. Often, by the time I left the house early in the morning for work, the kids would still be asleep and by late evening when I returned home, they would have fully spent their day and be taking a deserved rest. This is the family lifestyle of many ‘corporate’ parents in Lagos. I confess it is not the best. I therefore made conscious efforts to spend my weekends with them to make up for the lost days. Whenever I was on vacation, I gave them priority: take them to and from school, do their school assignments with them, watch TV together, go out and generally fraternise. I honestly do not want to be an absentee father.

 

I have since discovered that as parents when we make out time like this, we not only get to understand them better thereby enhancing child-parent bonding, but we are also involved in their socialization process.

 

On one of such occasions I was with my kids revising their notes in preparation for their exams. Then, they were in primary school – the twin boys were writing Religious Knowledge the following day, and taking them through their notes, the topic had to do with God’s instruction to Abraham in the book of Genesis, to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Abraham obeyed and we discussed the epic episode, how Abraham prepared an alter, laid his son on it, tied him up and brought out a knife and, after God saw his obedience, He stopped the process and provided a live ram as an alternative for the sacrifice.

 

And then my son asked: “Daddy, if you were Abraham, what would you do”?

 

I pretended as if I did not understand his question and asked, “How do you mean”?

 

He re-iterated the enquiry with heightened curiosity, switching to the future tense in grammatical slander as he said “as in….., will you kill me”?

 

I was taken aback! I knew this was a cheeky question that needed a careful answer. As Christians, I have often thought them about the virtues of obedience to the commandments of God. I must not contradict myself now because I knew how embarrassing the next comment from him would be. If I assured him that I would not kill him, he would likely ask ‘so you would disobey God?’ If I confirmed that I would obey God, then am I confirming I’ll kill him? This indeed was being trapped between the rock and a hard place! These kids…..!

 

Then, I carefully explained to him that if it was God’s commandment, like Abraham, I would obey, believing that God not being a wicked God was likely to intervene and provide an alternative like He did in Abraham’s case; and God was unlikely to allow him to be killed anyway. I made sure I did not for any reason compromise obedience to any commandment from God, no matter how inconvenient it seems for the time being.

 

He pondered over my response for about a minute and kept quiet. I was wondering what was going on in his innocent mind, but I couldn’t make it out. When he moved on, I heaved a sigh of relief.

 

Then I also decided to engage him. “Timi, if you were Isaac, what would you do?”

 

He didn’t have to think deep to give me an answer. I saw a mischievous glint in his eyes when he replied “I will push you away, you will fall down, and I will use my teeth to cut the ropes, and run away”!

 

I could not help having a good laugh. Even his twin brother burst out laughing because to him ‘am sure, his brother had just played out the role of one of their favourite cartoon heroes.

 

I wished I could be this candid with my own father when I was his age!

 

© Femi Adekunle 2024