{"id":910,"date":"2008-04-02T00:17:41","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T04:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/910"},"modified":"2008-03-29T12:18:20","modified_gmt":"2008-03-29T16:18:20","slug":"the-bible-is-not-a-children%e2%80%99s-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/910","title":{"rendered":"The Bible is not a children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things my wife asked for Christmas was the missing volumes to her series of Lemony Snicket\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Series of Unfortunate Events<\/a><\/em>, that outrageously (and refreshingly) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dark\u00e2\u20ac\u009d children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books. While many adults enjoy the wry humor in Snicket\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prose, the more significant aspect is children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response to a cycle of stories that have no happy ending and exploits children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worst fears (the children in the story are orphaned in the first book, and then it gets worse from there). Kids are eating up this series of stories. <\/p>\n

Lutheran pastor Ronald F. Marshall, in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Eaten Alive<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Touchstone (April 200) addresses the issue of children and fables from another angle. His article serves to highlight the paradox of how we often handle the Bible with children. Rather than allow the stories of faith to serve their instructional purpose with children by allowing it to speak to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unfortunate events\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in life, we are prone to “protecting” our children by glossing over the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153adult\u00e2\u20ac\u009d material in Scripture. But glossing over the harsh truths that these stories contain by explaining them away or rationalizing them (with explanations often out of reach of children’s capacity to understand) merely empties these stories of their power to teach and inform. <\/p>\n

Marshall writes, <\/p>\n

These tales\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthemselves usually sentimentalized in modern retellings\u00e2\u20ac\u201dteach children that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153much of what goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe propensity of all men for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as Bruno Bettelheim puts it in The Uses of Enchantment. But \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the dominant culture wishes to pretend, particularly where children are concerned, that the dark side of man does not exist.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Children experience anxious and destructive feelings. They can, for example, love their parents dearly, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but at times also hate them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d These upsetting feelings must be explored rather than covered up. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153By keeping this monster within the child unspoken of . . . the child fails to get to know his monster better\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and so loses the chance to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gain mastery over it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Against these illusions, the fairy tales stand with all their frightfulness\u00e2\u20ac\u201dinsisting on telling the truth. And the truth is indeed scary. And it is a truth that children can handle, indeed need to face.<\/p>\n

This insight must guide the telling of the story of Jonah to our children. Forget about cleaning up Jonah. Instead, tell the story the Bible tells. It is the story God wants your children to hear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree with Marshall and believe we should have more confidence in our children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capacity for meaning making than we often give them credit. They are not alone in struggling to make meaning of these biblical stories, for they read them with their parents and in the context of a faith community\u00e2\u20ac\u201dteachers, pastors, caregivers, etc.\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwho help interpret their meaning in the context of real life. The Bible is not a children’s book, but it is for them too, all of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

galindobanner5.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things my wife asked for Christmas was the missing volumes to her series of Lemony Snicket\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Series of Unfortunate Events, that outrageously (and refreshingly) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dark\u00e2\u20ac\u009d children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books. While many adults enjoy the wry humor in Snicket\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,24,16,40],"tags":[199,42,198],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-book-reviews-recommendations","category-children","category-development-theory","tag-children-and-the-bible","tag-israel-galindo","tag-lemony-snicket"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}