Over the years, I have lectured my children about many things.

Say “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir.” Don’t talk to strangers. Hang out with nice kids.

Wear your seat belt. Don’t drive too fast. Don’t do drugs. Don’t drink too much. Don’t get in the car with someone who’s been drinking or smoking dope.

And much, much more. Some of the topics were trivial and some were of grave importance.

But along the way, apparently, I forgot to tell them that when you go off to college, you should not sit around your dorm room and get boozed up, then decide that you’re bored and it would be a hoot to drive into the country that night and burn down some churches.

That’s what the cops say three Birmingham college kids did in the early hours of Feb. 3. The three are accused of setting fire to five rural Baptist churches that night and, a few days later, torching four more churches.

In the short term, bored college kids are supposed to go to a movie, order pizza or try to pick up some members of the opposite sex. In the long term, they’re supposed to complete college, finish growing up, get a job and maybe get married and have a family.

They are not supposed to be charged with torching churches, much less face the prospect of spending 20 or more years in the federal penitentiary.

Ironically, these guys probably would have passed any parent’s “nice kid” test. Police said they’re the products of good, upper-middle-class families.

That reminds me to edit my admonition about hanging out with nice kids, so as to stipulate that “nice” refers to high moral character, not material niceties.

It also prompts me to contemplate my reaction to last week’s arrests and to admit I was surprised that these were affluent white guys – which plays to all the unfair stereotypes about crime, punishment, poverty, class and race in America.

It says something about me, I fear, if I assumed the criminals either would be young, black, inner-city toughs or young, white rednecks/crackers saying “I seen” and “I taken” and sporting rebel flag tattoos. Crimes are crimes, and all kinds of people commit them.

As for my own children, who are now 21 and 18, over the years I had to come to grips with the fact that I could not be with them every moment of every day, which meant that their father and I would have to teach them the meaning of consequences.

That way, just in case they were to lose their moral compass and thus think that church burning sounded like fun, it also would occur to them that stupid thrills aren’t worth a decade or two in prison.

But who can say how children ultimately will turn out? God knows the parents of the Birmingham suspects didn’t intend and couldn’t have predicted that they’d one day see their sons go on trial for arson.

Here’s the scary part. Federal prosecutors said each church burning would be considered a separate crime, and that each could bring a five-year prison sentence.

If there is a silver lining to all of this, it is in the example being set by pastors and members of the affected churches as well as by students and administrators at the suspects’ colleges: At the churches, they spoke last week of God’s forgiveness. At the colleges, they spoke last week of helping rebuild the sanctuaries.

If, as a consequence of being a witness to evil, we are inspired to become better people, then we have gleaned from it a lesson about the power of love.

It is always a lesson better learned by example than by parental lectures.