Amid calls to censor the Bible and remove it from school curricula, John Stevens proposes that the problem is not with the Bible but with what and how we instruct our children. Here is a taste:
The real question is whether God intends [the sexual and violent bits of the Bible] to be kept from children. I suspect that we are shaped more by a romantic vision of childhood that owes more to Rousseau than Scripture, and Victorian notions of childhood innocence. In most of the world, and certainly, in Bible times, children were familiar with harsh reality and the simple ‘facts of life’ from a much earlier age. After all, families shared a single room and yet there were multiple children! Kids on farms know a lot about sex.
God commanded parents to teach the Law to their children and make it part of daily life. They were to talk about it. This includes the vulgar and violent parts, which are crucial to the identity shaping of the people of God. The Bible does not shy away from reality. Most of the time God’s people lived in threat of violence & in proximity to idolatry with its sexual immorality. The Bible is not sentimentality but realism. It is the fallen world seen red in tooth and claw. Israelite children were not to be isolated from this, but taught how to live faithfully in it and resist its temptations…
I think we need to be on the front foot and stop hiding reality from our kids, but truly teach them the Bible (in an age-appropriate way) and not shy from preparing them for the real world.
Stevens’s argument is well worth considering. As a father, I enjoy reading some children’s Bibles to my children. But I have always sought to give them a steady diet of the entire Bible.
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