Telling God's Story - Preface and Chapter 1: Laws about Mildew and Dragons with Crowns

Preface
In the short preface to his book, Peter Enns observes that there is a "big gap between what children tend to learn about the Bible in the early years, and how Scripture is studied in later years, as children mature into adults." In this book Enns proposes to focus on what the Bible is about as a whole, rather than on individual Bible stories.

The purpose of this kind of approach is "to prepare young Christians to have a vibrant faith in God and trust in Scripture in a world that is changing more quickly than we can describe."

Chapter one is an introductory chapter that leads into the two main parts of the book: 

• Part One: How to Teach the Bible
• Part Two: Reading the Story for Yourself: The Five Acts of the Bible

Chapter 1 "Laws about Mildew and Dragons with Crowns"
In this chapter, the author deals with why the Bible is such a difficult book to teach. He uses an experience with his children and their messy rooms as a metaphor for approaching the Bible.

After some years of frustration over the children's messy bedrooms, Peter got the idea of mounting a closet organizing system which, while not solving all the details of the problem, went a long way toward the children's rooms being more presentable and less chaotic. "...the Bible looks a little bit like my child's room. It's a mess. Names, places, events are all over the place, and you hardly know where to start cleaning up. It's such a mess...that if you ripped 20 pages out of Leviticus or I Chronicles, you might not even notice it was missing..."

After giving an honest assessment of many adult believers' struggles to get through "Bible in a year" reading programs or trying to make some sense of many large portions of the Bible (such as ceremonial laws about mildew, etc), Enns asks, "What should you make of all this? And what, if anything, should you teach to your children?"

The Old Testament is particularly difficult, but those difficulties also "bleed" over into our efforts to understand the New Testament since the NT has a total of over 1,000 citations and allusions to the OT in it! The Bible is a very detailed and sometimes difficult book to follow, and the author's desire is to help give some order to the chaos just like the closet organizers did for his children's bedrooms.

I'm going to close this post with quotes from the end of this introductory chapter, which are key for moving forward with the book:

• "Any teaching of Scripture to children must have a much more practical and deeper purpose: to encourage children to become mature, knowledgeable, and humble followers of Jesus, growing in faith. Growing in faith is not a contest or part of a daily to-do list. It is a journey that all Christians are on..."
• "So what is the Bible, and what are we supposed to be doing with it?...Why does the Word of God say the things it says? Why does it look the way it looks? And is obedience really the essence of what we are supposed to get out of it? Of course, the answer is yes - in part. But the Bible aims much higher; it teaches us to see ourselves and the world around us in fresh, exciting, and challenging ways. The Bible is not a Christian owner's manual. It bears witness to who God is, what he has done, and who we, as his people, are."

In answer to the normal fear of a parent to be able to teach their child the Bible in such a way that they not ruin the child spiritually, Enns says that none of us is up to the challenge, at least not on our own. "Remember that your children are God's children. It is your calling and responsibility to raise them in a godly way, but don't think for one minute that their success rests on your skills and abilities. Your children are, after all, God's work in the end...So have no fear, parents. You will make mistakes (although I hope this book will help you make fewer), but remember God's grace is bigger than the best of your intentions..."

 
 Coming next - Chapter Two "What the Bible Actually Is (and Isn't)"