Every so often kids ask parents &045; or other adults they trust &045; difficult questions. Why does God let evil things happen to people? Why do some people have dark skin and some light skin? Why did our next door neighbor commit suicide? What really happened to the people on the top floors of the World Trade Center? Why haven’t you talked to your sister in four years? Where do babies come from?

The questioning kid wants information about important stuff, but we adults don’t really want to discuss those issues with anyone, let alone our own children. My parents were pretty cool about most things, but I can still remember asking questions to which the answer was a variation of this: You’ll understand that better when you’re all grown up.

Here’s an example: My father hated Richard Nixon (he was called King Richard the First in our house). I remember asking why. I was confused because I knew we were Republicans (we still had buttons and other campaign paraphernalia from Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater in our house). My father grimaced, and my mother rolled her eyes. You’re too young to understand such things, they said.

Parents are human beings, of course, so they (we) are wonderfully inconsistent. Even though I was too young to understand why President Nixon was evil, my father decided that I was old enough to know the truth about making babies. He explained the &uot;facts of life&uot; one evening while we took the dog for a walk. I was appalled and promised myself that I was never, ever, going to do anything so disgusting in my life (eventually I broke that childhood promise … but the rest of that story is none of your business).

For most of life’s persistent and difficult questions, though, I would have to wait for adulthood, when I could expect to find the answers I was seeking. After I was all grown up, I imagined I would enter a golden age of information; everything would finally make sense. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for answers to many of the most difficult questions. Like everybody else, instead of a magic answer key which provides the solutions to every problem, I found myself asking many of the same questions that I asked as a child.

Why do people seem to like being selfish and unkind? Why does &uot;being nice&uot; when you are an adult make people suspicious or make you look like a wimp? Why is violence the path so many people choose when other options are available? Why is keeping the truth secret often considered good in business, while doing the same thing at home is usually wrong (except when Christmas presents are involved)? Why is it okay to execute people who are barely teenagers for committing murder when it wasn’t okay for their mothers to have abortions?

Growing up has not meant finding the answers more easily; it’s meant more questions, about more things &045; most of which have answers that vary according to what is going on. Here’s an example: Sometimes killing is okay, society tells us, like when the state executes someone, or when our soldiers shoot at enemy soldiers. But other times, killing becomes murder. You have to know where you are and why you’re using your weapon in order to know whether the killing that follows is right or wrong. When students in the National Guard ask me if the coming war with Iraq will be a &uot;just&uot; war, if killing Iraqis is the right thing to do, I have no answer that satisfies them or me. Even good Christians disagree about the answer to that question.

Amidst all the questions and pondering, however, a few things are becoming crystal clear. As adults we can’t hide from the complexity of life’s decisions, although we do sometimes need to shield our children from it. We do not automatically have access to easy answers to life’s persistent and difficult questions. And despite the lack of easy answers, we are still called to make the best decisions we can &045; decisions that affirm life, show our love for each other and the world that we have been lent, and help the next generation make better decisions than we did.

David Rask Behling is a rural Albert Lea resident. His column appears Tuesdays.