Telling God's Story - Why Does it Matter?

We just went through the book, Telling God's Story, by Peter Enns - a book written to help us teach the Bible to children. I want to follow up with a couple of thoughts about the implications of the author's proposed way of presenting scripture to children.

There are two major shifts that stand out to me in Enns' way of teaching the Bible to children:

• First, starting young children with stories of Jesus rather than with Old Testament stories. This helps to establish early on that the Bible is primarily about Jesus, therein sending a clear message that He is the lens through which we understand God's story. It also makes the Bible story cohesive, around one Person, rather than a book of disjointed stories.
• Second (related to the first point), teaching the child the nature and purpose of scripture through approaching it in an age-appropriate way so that they can process the Bible according to their level of understanding. In this way the legitimate and obvious questions that the Bible brings up to the more developed mind can be asked as the child matures in his ability to think things out. In the contemporary evangelical world, we have often mistakenly taught our children that the Bible is something that it's not and have subliminally sent the message that it should not be questioned at all. This is in part because we have read it with the modern scientific and enlightenment worldview rather than with the worldview of the ancient peoples.

Why does this matter? Two reasons come to me (though I'm sure there are more):

1. Since our desire as parents and teachers is to lead the child to Jesus, helping him/her to understand Jesus and what it means to be a follower of His, it's critical that we underscore as much as possible that scripture is given to us to help us see what God is like in His Son Jesus. The living Word is greater than the written Word, so it's critical that our children learn that scripture points us to Jesus (not the other way around). Though this may seem a subtle difference, it's a big and important difference.
2. If the child doesn't learn what God's primary intentions are in giving us scripture, he won't be prepared for the many controversies about the Bible that there are in both the Christian world and the world of those who aren't followers of Jesus. The child's unrealistic expectations of what the Bible is and does can set him up for either blind/naive defensiveness of the Bible (which can result in an entrenched position that will hinder him from growing in understanding of God in Christ) or for a complete rejection of the faith because he wasn't prepared for confronting reasonable arguments against what he was told the Bible is.  

Because of technology today, parents and teachers can no longer protect children from the many alternative views about scripture that are easily accessible. We can help prepare them for that encounter.

For those interested in what Peter Enns has developed of curriculum for teaching children the Bible, go to:   http://www.amazon.com/Telling-Gods-Story-Instructor-Teaching/dp/1933339489/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1361894089&sr=8-10&keywords=peter+enns  There you will find some teacher and children's materials available.

For any who may want to go into more depth on the topic of the nature and purpose of scripture, Peter Enns has written other books that can be found on amazon.com:  "Inspiration and Incarnation" and "Genesis for Normal People".  You can also find some material on the general topic of the Bible in the blog posts that I did a year ago on the book, "The Bible Made Impossible":  http://nitasbookclub.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-made-impossible-authors.html

I pray for today's little ones who are dear and precious to God that they will grow in wisdom and grace and surpass us in their understanding of how utterly good and wonderful our God is. May we cheer them on even though it will certainly require the un-doing of some of our inherited ways of thinking.