telling bible stories to children — the violence and sex edition

Artwork © 2007, Scott Gustafson — see his gallery here and buy this print here

 

Yesterday I wrote about the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, which is the celebration of Abraham’s willingness to obey God by sacrificing Ishmael.  Our own Hebrew story is very similar, though the son who is nearly killed is Isaac.  Kind of in jest, I wrote the following in asterisk form:

While I do support teaching children the whole of the Bible (over time), I don’t think of this tale – either version — as an especially good “children’s story.”  I’d rather not get into this with Baylor’s until she’s old enough to not worry if her God-fearing father is making plans to walk her up Geita hill for anything other than a nature hike.

I didn’t mean a great deal by this, as I’ve honestly not given much thought to the appropriateness of Bible stories for my nearly one-year old daughter, Baylor.  But a few of you responded, and one of the shepherds from our sponsoring church asked:

Will you teach your kids about the cross?

Obviously, my answer is “yes.”  But new questions arise — like when and what about other stories?  On Baylor’s first Easter, Christie and I together told her the story of God, including Jesus being hung on a cross to die.  [Not that Baylor understood the story as a 4-month old, but we wanted to do this together as a family.]  I realized this morning, however, that I ought to be thinking through the details of when to share what types of stories with my children.  Are all Bible stories appropriate for all ages?  Should we leave some until the children can understand them better?  Or is it better to introduce them to the stories from the very beginning, and let their understanding grow slowly?  I’ve now got all kinds of questions — especially for those of you who’ve already made some of these decisions.  Here are just a few:

• How do we tell Bible stories to our children without making them sound like just another fairy tale or untrue bedtime story?
• How do we tell stories of death and violence?  Do we downplay the gruesome details, or share them from the beginning?
• When do we talk Jesus being murdered on a cross?  Do we explain that God wanted it that way even when our children are very young?
• When do we tell the story of Abraham being willing to kill his own son?  And our God having told him to do so?
• What about stories of babies heads being dashed on the rocks and entire nations murdered?
• Sex, adultery, and prostitution?
• Do we wait until the children will understand these stories, or do the stories themselves help to develop proper Christian understanding?  Or, in other words, do we allow a worldview to develop which will provide a safe place for these stories — or do these stories actually help to bring about said worldview?

Your advice is more than welcome. I have nothing intelligent to say at this point.  [Some of you are thinking, "What else is new?"]

Except I do have this one intelligent thing to say:  If you have children and you’re not telling them Bible stories, I think you’re missing out on an extremely valuable opportunity to Jesus-shape your children.  Time spent with our children is crucial — and parents sharing with their children the stories of God (when lying down and when awake) is meant to be a formative time in the life of young Christians.  I kindly encourage you to get on that.

brett’s morning blend (17aug10)

Preaching Noah and the Violence of God

God destroys all the men, women, and children in the world — save eight.  Grown adults desperately clinging to the outside of the one boat in existence while little babies drowned right from the start.  In the end everyone died (except one chosen family).  How do we preach a story like that?  What kind of God does that?  Zack Eswine offers some advice on the subject.

How to Spot a Missionary

Jon Acuff (despite our recent disagreement) writes one of my favorite blogs on the net.  In this little ditty, he shares with us his expert advice on how to spot a missionary.  Among the dead giveaways:  If she’s longwinded and can’t dance, you’re probably looking at a missionary (unless you’re at a Beverly Hills nightclub, in which case you might be trying to hit on Ellen Degeneres).

And if you have a growing suspicion that you yourself might be a missionary, you should probably have a look at this post: you might be a missionary in africa if…

Anatomy of a Christian Hipster

If you’ve found you’re not a missionary, but think you might be a Christian Hipster, this website should help you out a little.  Be sure to check out the interactive photos of real life Christian Hipsters.  I don’t think I fit any of these categories (I’ve only got about 1/16th of hipster in me), but I’d be closest to “The Fugal Collegian,” I suppose.

Words

This video is compliments of Radiolab and NPR — and is pretty amazing:

The Lady’s Brunch Burger

Yesterday was another “Sandwich Monday” on NPR’s Wait Wait.  And don’t get me wrong, I think this sandwich looks absolutely delicious — but why in the world would it be called the LADY’s Brunch Burger?!  I don’t know very many members of the female persuasion who would put this atop their lists for any meal of the day, much less brunch.  Paula Dean’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

love and justice – part mbili

I believe Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is affirming the laws of the Old Covenant.  He’s fulfilling them and giving them greater meaning, in an effort to explain what life in the kingdom will look like.  He’s for sure not throwing out the Law or the Prophets.  He’s not suggesting God has changed his mind about the justice thing.  In Matthew 5:38-42, Jesus is speaking to individuals who may be wronged when face to face with an evil person, and he tells them not to respond by defending their own personal rights, but to instead give up those rights completely.  Jesus begins his comments here with Old Testament talk of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” — which, as best as I can tell, is always in reference to vengeance, paying someone back equally for an evil they’ve already done to another.  I’m not sure this section offers directive to us in what to do in those moments just before an evil act is done to an individual other than ourselves. I don’t read this text as containing instruction for how we act when someone is oppressing the weak, or taking the lives of those who cannot defend themselves. 

If our understanding of turning the other cheek requires that we refuse to come to the aid of the defenseless in a time of violence, it must also require that we don’t come to their defense in the other situations mentioned.  Will we allow the poor to be taken advantage of in court, their land ceased for business projects or greed in general — and ought we encourage them to give not only their land but their homes as well.  If an evil man has killed one innocent person, we turn over to them a second?  

Our understanding of love and how it works MUST be grounded in the character of God, not in our hatred for death, or even in one of God’s own commandments.  I hate murder and killing and violence as much as the next Christian.  But I can’t throw out who God is in order to put all of my weight behind a view of non-violence, no matter the cost.  It’s as if we’ve convinced ourselves that love and justice can’t coexist in a world, much less in a person, and absolutely not in a God.  But the problem is God does exist in those extremes.  Somehow love and justice must be tied together.  Just as one individual might argue that another can’t ignore love in order to punish and bring justice on all the evil people in the world, I would have to argue that he can’t throw out justice in order to keep from having to do a hard thing like stop one of those acts, even if it might require violence.  Both love and justice are crucial to being like God.

When Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for them, it’s not a command to give them free reign of the world, allowing them to take whatever they like, whether money or power or lives.  That ignores the nature and character of God in order to “love” a murderer.  Is that how we love people?  By enabling them to do horrible acts?  If you truly loved me, would you allow me to make a mockery of creation and life by killing a number of innocent people?  Do we allow our children to beat up other kids, because we are against stopping them?  We know God disciplines those he loves, as is the nature of love (Hebrews 12).  Not only can love and justice exist together, but the very nature of love involves justice and discipline and correction.  Love sometimes does hard things — and if forced to choose between the lives of innocent people and an evil man who is seeking to kill those people, love within the character of God does not allow us to pull a Saul, standing by and watching as those innocent people are murdered.  That is not love.  

So I emphasize that we should love evil oppressors.  We should love the murderer.  But not with a twisted and ungodly love that allows him to do as he wishes to others.  We must love with a love that is tied up in the whole character of God.

love and justice – part moja

I’ve been reflecting on this nonviolence and pacifism issue for a bit, and thought I’d post on it again.  I still am struggling with it, but I at least have a few thoughts.  Though I don’t know that they’re ordered well or in logical fashion.

Whenever I look at an issue, I need to see it through the lens of the character of God.  In the case of using violence in order to protect the weak, it seems to many there is a clash between love and justice.  But we know that both exist in the very nature of who God is.  The argument is often made that if I use violence against an evil person in order to prevent further evil, I am not showing love.  I wonder, though, if this act of defending the defenseless might indeed be love — a very difficult version of love, but love.  The kind of love that is in the very character of God.  

Psalm 9:16, “The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.”  Justice is in God’s character; he’s KNOWN by it.  And the wicked are responsible for placing themselves in position to receive the rough end of the justice stick…

Proverbs 21:15 — “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous, but terror to evildoers.”  Apparently a right relationship with God is one in which we are joyful when justice is done in the world — not happy, but joyful, knowing that God’s character was exercised in our world.

Proverbs 28:5 — “Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully.”  

Isaiah 9:7 — “…He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever…”  Jesus rules in a way that is always just AND always right.

Isaiah 30:16 — “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.  For the Lord is a God of justice…”  Grace, compassion, and justice can and do coexist in the person of God — and should in our lives as well.  We don’t have to rid our lives of one in order to have the others.

Isaiah 56:1 — “This is what the Lord says: ‘Maintain justice and do what is right…’”

Isaiah 61:8 — “For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate iniquity.”

Zechariah 7:9 — “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.  Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor…’”  Again, justice, mercy, and compassion together.  But what if showing mercy and compassion to one individual requires showing justice to another?  Can acts of justice themselves also be acts of compassion?

In Luke 11, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they’ve kept a lot of rules, but “neglected justice and the love of God.”  Justice and love cannot be separated, and a list of rules (mine or God’s) cannot be elevated above them.

Even the cross itself was an act performed in order to demonstrate God’s justice, so that he could be just and loving in his actions, Romans 3.  The Father stood by and watched his son die — in order to bring salvation and justice… at the same time and in the same event.

it’s (a) just war…

I’m fairly removed these days from discussions of pacifism and just war – which I don’t honestly want to complain about.  But I read a post from John Alan Turner this morning that really touched me, and made me think.  You can read it here.  I feel there’s a deeper issue beneath all of this, and I intend to devote some time to understanding it.  I’ve posted my response below:

This post reminds me of questions I’ve pushed to the back of my mind for some time — both because of the difficulty of thinking through them, and because I’m living in East Africa now and don’t read often about the military and casualties and discussions of pacifism and just war. And I definitely am standing in the same corner with you, conflicted applause and all.

But as long as my memory’s been jogged, I might as well try and work through a little of this. It’s probably a drastic oversimplification, but I’ve always seen Jesus as one who gave up his own “personal” rights, but was willing to stand and defend the rights of others. That’s how I’ve read the New Testament — that I should be willing to turn my cheek and not raise a hand to defend myself. But that if someone is being oppressed or taken advantage of, and is unable to defend his/herself, then it becomes my responsibility.

I’m reminded of walking down a back alley late one night in Wuhan, China. Often while I lived there I heard about the intensity with which many men would beat their wives into submission. This one night in particular I witnessed it. Without thinking I stepped in between the two, asked him why he was doing this, and told him he’d better stop. He did stop, with his head hung in shame — not because what he was doing was wrong, but because he was being corrected directly by another individual. I don’t know if what I did was right. It may be that his wife received a harsher beating that very night for embarrassing him. It may be that I should have dealt with this problem differently in a culture with so much emphasis on honor and shame. But what I do know is that I didn’t have to hit or push this guy to get him to stop, but would have if it had been required. I know that action would have been justified by most, but I don’t know if it would have been like Christ.

That night in China wasn’t war, nor was it taking the life of another. But I magnify that night times thousands and I begin to wonder about protecting those who can’t protect themselves on a larger scale — and when do we decide to push or hit. Or do we? Will the beating be more severe next time, because we resisted? Will we be less like Christ, because we fought?

Either way, I should make clear that I greatly appreciate and respect those who defend our country. I know there are numerous sacrifices made, so that the U.S. can be a safer place, and so that people like me can sit around and think about these issues and others, freely. I don’t think posting today has gotten me a great deal closer to having all the answers, but at least I’m now engaged in the discussion. And for the time being, I’ll refrain from clapping and fold those hands in prayer — seems like that will help everyone involved a great deal more.