A guest blogger on Unfundamentalist Parenting recently put into words a handful of questions that I imagine millions of parents have asked themselves and one another: "What do I tell my child about the Bible? What do I teach my child when I fall into that category known as 'progressive Christian' but I don't fit there neatly?"
I love the honesty of the questions she poses and respect her vulnerability as she reveals bits of her own journey of faith. Ms. Olson gives voice to a complex issue that many Christians can identify with, whether or not they openly discuss it: the Bible is a central part of my Christian faith, but I don't like everything about it. Where does that leave me?
While I am not a parent, these are the kinds of conversations that the biblical scholar in me loves to have with others. So when I read these comments:
"I can't tell my daughter that the Creator God from the first chapter of Genesis made the world, said it was good, then angrily punished two people (and because of them, all of us) for breaking a single rule."
Followed closely by these:
"[But] I love this book of ours, this Bible, this Holy Book that has been the Word of God to so many over the centuries. I love it and yet it causes me pain at the same time."
... it occurs to me that there are two main issues playing out in this field of anxiety and concern. The easier one to spot is that of which elements of the Bible to expose children to, and when. The more pressing one, it seems to me, is the matter of deciding for oneself what the Bible is and is not, what its role is in your faith formation.
In the case of this particular blog post, I think there is also the intimately related issue of sorting through the differences between whom we know or believe God to be and the somewhat bipolar God who is depicted in the Scriptures. The way God is depicted in Scripture is often troubling, and it is important to be able to separate those depictions from your image of who God is. Countless people have been told that the Bible is perfect and have been taught to read it literally. These two beliefs can lead to exactly the struggles that Ms. Olson names in her blog post.
And as she also notes in her post, so many Christians are given a fairly limited education about the context of the Biblical stories and the differences between the cultures of the Biblical texts and ours. Many Christians grow up taking a fairly literalist or "take things at face value" approach to scripture since that is how it is handled in pulpits and Sunday school classrooms.
My terribly biased (though it actually was solicited) advice is to suggest that adults, who have grown up in the Christian tradition, ought to do the work of coming to terms with what the Bible is, and is not, and to read some of the relevant passages in order to sit with some of the concerning topics that Ms. Olson notes:
- there is a good bit of violence inflicted by the "good guys," and it is justified because that is what God told them to do;
Sort through and figure out what exactly the Bible is for you, first. Spend time thinking through the relationship between your own faith and the Bible and who you believe God is. Then you will have some grounded thoughts through which to engage your child's questions.