I was talking with a mom of a 3 year old boy. She said something about how it's hard to be a really good parent. It's easy to just get by as a mediocre parent, but it's harder to be an excellent parent. She was a competitive figure skater. Go figure. And I'm just a perfectionist. We seemed to see eye to eye.
I mentioned that our son likes talking about killing and how we really haven't promoted the idea of violence in our home. But of course, we read the Bible everyday and there is much killing there. So go figure he's going to be exposed to the concept of killing. As we listened to one version of a Children's Bible on CD, (one disk from Exodus to Samuel), every story had the word kill in it. And David killed Goliath with the sword after he knocked him down... She was in agreement, "Sam was asking about why Jesus had to die on the cross and I told him that that's a really deep question we'll have to talk about that later." She was dashing out the door, but I wanted to share with her some things that I realized about telling the kids about the cross.
In being committed to reading the Bible to the kids every night, I remember wrestling with the feelings of being a pacifist. I didn't want to expose the kids to killing and death. So I censored it. Somehow, when a little child has limited language, you can gloss over many stories and sort of hope they don't notice the inconsistencies between the pictures and the story. But that ended quickly one day. When we read the story of the Good Samaritan, Elijah pressed me about the picture of the man with the bruises. We couldn't move on to the next story. The illustrations were very well done, and it intrigued the kids. He wanted to study the cuts and bruises. If I did manage to shut the book, he would ask for the story the next night and he got to study the pictures and ask more questions after thinking about it all day. Well, that's when we introduce the idea that there are people who are not nice and hurt others. And I can picture the comical thugs holding large bats coming for the innocent man who got mugged. It is interesting that it wasn't so much a story involving war that made have to put aside my pacifism.
With him noticing the details about this story, there was no way he would gloss over the crucifixion. Both kids had pressed me about the story. They really wanted to know what was this man doing hanging there off some wood beams. That's when I realized that my pacifism was not going to cut it. Can I spare my children from the concept of death when the essence of the cross is overcoming spiritual death? I could not water down the truth for the kids. They were intrigued by the pages of Jesus hanging there being put in place by nails. Hannah now tells Elijah often how he was hung there. What does it mean when we are called to have child-like faith? Why does Jesus want the little children to come to him, when his death is so violent? That's when it dawned on me. The violence of the cross is so awful, so dreadful, it is meant to burn in our minds. And this awful imagery is meant to be the first to be etched in young minds so they understand grace.
I think back to images of horror movies or violent movies that I was unfortunately exposed to as a young child. I can easily call those images up in my mind because of the impact it made. For little children to hear about Jesus and the cross, it is going to shock them. What happened at the cross is awful. Without the wrestling through this aspect of what to expose to the kids, I think it's easy to gloss over the violence because of our times. Violence is so prevalent in media, that it seems to be a very normal part of our lives. But the gospel and Jesus' crucifixion is meant to make an deep and everlasting impression.
So I have embraced telling the kids about the cross. If God wants us to tell our children about the faith of our Fathers, then we need to tell them about the Bible. And if the essence of the story contains death then I changing it would be changing the Bible. For the most part, there are things we can censor, but there are things in a story we cannot censor. And it seems that the brutality of many things that happened in the Bible cannot be censored, it would change the story. I can gloss over the idea that Delilah seduced Samson to find out about the truth of his hair, but what became of Samson cannot be changed. He died being crushed under bricks. Now that's brutal. I can now say to my 4 year-old, he died. And he's gonna ask, "but how did he die?" He's not going to be satisfied with "he just did." I guess now I know why the story of Noah's ark is so popular. Some dude builds a big boat and he herds pairs of animals into the large boat. But if are to continue with the story, well, God wipes out the entire earth. So to keep the story cute would mean to deny the curiosity of the inquisitive child. I know my kids have asked, "why was Noah building an ark?" "Why were they inside 40 days?" Inevitably, the truth has to come out.
I've decided that we are going to keep reading the Bible to the kids. Although I do question is why there is killing in every story of the Bible. I still must continually act in faith. And when it comes to teaching the Bible to my kids I do so in faith without censorship. The bottom line is that I'm going to read the Bible to my kids.
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