Some Kid Logic

From This American Life, the episode “Kid Logic,” and contributer Jack Hitt:

Well, it all began at Christmas two years ago when my daughter was 4 years old. And it was the first time that she had asked, what does this holiday mean.
So I explained to her that this was celebrating the birth of Jesus and she wanted to know more about that and we went out and bought a kids bible, had these readings at night and she loved them, wanted to know everything about Jesus.
So we read a lot about his birth and about his teaching, and she would ask constantly what that phrase was. I would explain to her that it was “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And we would talk about those old words and what that all meant.
And then one day we were driving past a big church, and out front was an enormous crucifix. She said “Who is that?” and I guess I never really told that part of the story. So I had this little… “Oh, well, that’s Jesus. I forgot to say the ending. Well, you know, he ran afoul of the Roman government. You know, this message that he had was so radical and unnerving to the prevailing authorities of the time that they had to kill him. They came to the conclusion that he would have to die, that message was to troublesome.”
It was about a month later, we had gone through the whole story of what Christmas meant, and it was about mid January. And her school had Martin Luther King day off, so I knocked off work and decided we’d play and I’d take her out to lunch.
And we were sitting in there, and right on the table where we happened to plop down was the arts section of the local newspaper. And there, as big as life was a huge drawing by like a 10 year old kid of Martin Luther King.
She said “who’s that?”
And I said “well, that’s Martin Luther King, and that’s why you’re not in school today. We’re celebrating his birthday. This is the day we celebrate his life.”
She said “so who was he?”
And I said “well, he was a preacher.”
She looks up at me and goes “For Jesus?”
And I said, “yeah, actually he was. But there was another thing he was really famous for. He had a message.” You’re trying to say this to a four year old, this is the first time they’ve heard anything, so you’re just very careful about how you phrase everything.
So I said, “Well, yeah, he was a preacher and he had a message.”
And she said, “What was his message?”
“He said that you should treat everybody the same, no matter what they look like.”
She thought about that for a minute, and she said, “Well, that’s what Jesus said.”
I said, “yeah, I guess I had never thought of it like that, but yeah.”
And she thought for a minute and looked up at me.

And she said, “Did they kill him too?”