No. 2 · 27 August 2026
Two honest readings of Jesus at the tomb, and what it costs to pick one.
Here's a question that splits kitchens. Your dad has died, or the job went, or the scan came back wrong. Your kids are nine and six. Do you let them see it?
Christians disagree about this, and both sides have scripture on their side, which is why the argument never really ends.
Look at David. His child by Bathsheba is dying, and while the boy lives David fasts and lies on the ground all night. The servants are frightened of him. Then the child dies, and they're afraid to tell him because they think he'll do something worse.
Then David arose from the earth and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he came into the house of the LORD, and worshipped. (2 Samuel 12:20)
He washes. He eats. The household is watching a man decide that the roof stays up.
There's a real argument here, and it isn't repression. A small child can't carry an adult's grief. If you sob at the table and your six-year-old concludes the world has ended, you've handed her something she has no shelf for. Some parents call this love. Doing your weeping in the car, and coming inside steady.
And then there's Jesus at Bethany. He knows he's about to raise Lazarus. He knows the ending. He weeps anyway, publicly, and the crowd reads it correctly as love (John 11:35-36).
A third of the Psalms are complaints. God apparently wanted the tears written down and set to music and sung by everybody, out loud, together.
The worry on this side is specific. Kids know. They always know. A child who watches a parent say "I'm fine" while the house feels wrong doesn't conclude the parent is strong. She concludes that sad things are not to be mentioned, and she'll still believe that at forty.
Notice what David's story actually shows. He grieved hard and openly for seven days. The composure came after. That's not a man who never fell apart in front of the staff. It's a man who fell apart first.
Still, scripture doesn't hand you a rule. It gives you a weeping Messiah and a washing king and no verse that tells you which one this Tuesday requires.
So here's what's at stake. Pick wrong toward composure and you teach your kids that grief is shameful. Pick wrong toward openness and you ask a child to be your friend when she needs you to be her father.
Nobody can score that for you in advance. Not your pastor, not your mother-in-law, and certainly not software.
What you can do is tell them what the tears are about. "I'm crying because I miss Grandad, and I'm not going anywhere." A child can hold that. It's the unexplained silence she can't.