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| Children's craft about the walls of Jericho. Image source. |
Well I've already written about this (Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible) but it seems every few months I come back to it. Every few months, I find myself searching online for what kind of bible story books I can buy for my kid. It's a combination of Bing, Amazon, taking screenshots and then searching by image on Chinese shopping apps Taobao and Jingdong, checking all the details and prices and shipping times, and then kind of just... not buying anything.
Can't find anything I like. Or, I find some books that could be possibilities, but in the end it doesn't seem worth it. He already has so many books. Does it make sense to buy him Christian books, if we don't even know if the content is going to be what I want?
See, here's the thing. In general, Bible story books for children fall into 2 categories of wrongness:
1. When telling a bible story to children, omit the ****ed-up parts. Kind of clean it up.
Examples:
Two women fighting over a baby; King Solomon wisely tells them to "cut the baby in half" as a test to see who is the real mother. Well, did you know that those two women were prostitutes, and actually they both had a baby, but one baby had died? Yeah we don't tell the kids that, we just tell them, "so, there were 2 women and 1 baby" and start the story there.
Jacob had 12 sons, we tell the kids. Aw isn't that nice. What we don't tell them is, Jacob had 12 sons by 4 different women, and there were some ****ed-up love triangles going on there, much of which was not, um, enthusiastic consent.
Esther. Haman was plotting to kill all the Jews, but Queen Esther bravely risked her own life and went to the king and begged for his help, and the king saved them and had Haman hanged. And the children's bible books end the story there, but what actually happened next was then Esther's people killed A LOT of people who were trying to attack them.
Daniel got thrown into the lions' den because of his obedience to God, but God saved him from the lions! Yay! And then, what they don't tell the kids is, then the king made a law that everyone would have to pray to Daniel's God (nope, no freedom of religion) and the guys who had plotted against Daniel were thrown into the lions' den instead, along with their wives and children.
Balaam and his talking donkey. There was actually a bunch of confusing political drama going on in that story- but we tell it to the kids like "oooh cool, a talking donkey!" And things don't end well for Balaam- later we see him enticing the Israelites to have sex and worship other gods [trigger warning for rape at that link, holy shit], and then he dies in the ensuing violence.
2. Keep the ****ed-up parts in the story, but just don't point out how ****ed-up they are.
Examples:
Noah and his family and 2 of every kind of animal got in the ark and survived the Flood, which killed everyone else in the world. WHICH KILLED EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD. This is literally what they're teaching kids in Sunday school: God decided all humans were so evil that they all deserve to die- the entire population of the world- except for 8 people. They don't hide that; that's actually what they tell the kids. But everyone acts like it's fine! Wow, look at all these cute animals! What a fun story!
God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Abraham was willing to do it, wow, such a wonderful role model of faith and obedience! And then God said it was just a test and he didn't really have to kill his son. It's a happy ending for everyone! I'm sure this didn't cause any long-term psychological trauma for anyone, or call God's character into question! What a nice story, right, kids?
God gave Samson strength as long as he never cut his hair. But, oh no, Samson told Delilah his secret, and she got someone to cut his hair, so he had no strength and the Philistines captured him. But Samson prayed to God, and God gave him his strength back when he was a captive at a huge Philistine party, and Samson knocked down a pillar and it knocked down the entire roof of the building, and even though it killed Samson too, the good news is he killed more Philistines right there when he died than he had killed in his whole life before that. Yes, that's really the story of Samson that you find in little kids' bibles.
The torture and crucifixion of Jesus is extremely graphic and violent and not appropriate for children.
Joshua and the battle of Jericho. God led his people to the promised land, but there were already people living there, so of course God had to tell Joshua to drive them out violently and commit genocide. Look at this, kids, they walked around the walls 7 times! So silly! Who would have thought that walking around a city 7 times would make the walls fall down? What a cool story!
David fought Goliath because the Israelites had made a deal with the Philistines- they each send out 1 fighter, and if the Philistine fighter wins, the Israelites will become the Philistines' slaves, but if the Israelite fighter wins, the Philistines will become the Israelites' slaves. This agreement about making each other slaves was openly shown as part of the story, when we learned it in Sunday School. We all know that God helps underdog David win and kill Goliath, but nobody in Sunday School ever said anything about how that whole "the Philistines will be our slaves" thing worked out.
(My hope is that my readers who grew up reading these bible stories are suddenly like "WAIT A MINUTE" because they of course knew that all these things were in these stories, but just never realized how wrong they were.)
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So... I want to buy him some kind of Christian or bible-related book, but I can't find one I'm excited about, and I realized the problem is this: The bible just straight-up isn't appropriate for children.
Sometimes the writers of these children's books kind of clean up some of the nicer stories to make them appropriate for children- which I don't like because it misrepresents what the bible actually is. Like there's this view in mainstream American culture that the bible is a book of nice stories and inspirational quotes you can put on a bumper sticker- and it's NOT, and I am so ANNOYED about this misconception, and I don't want to teach my kid that. The bible has a lot of foreskins and genocide and women being married off without anyone thinking to ask "does she want to marry him?" It's ****ed-up and I'm a Christian and I love the bible but it's not for kids.
Or, alternatively, the writers of the children's books don't remove the ****ed-up parts, but they don't comment on how ****ed-up they are. They just say "and then God commanded Joshua to kill all the Canaanites" and then continue with the story like everything's fine. WTF????? You want to teach your kid to not even notice when a story has genocide in it???????
So where does that leave us? Well, little Square Root has a few books about Christmas, but no other Christian or bible story books besides those. The Christmas story is not ****ed-up (well... if you ignore the part where Herod murders the babies in Bethlehem... but that sort of happens off-stage so it doesn't feel unnatural to me when it isn't mentioned, I guess)... so... yeah I'm happy with the Christmas books that he has.
He also has a toy nativity set that he loves SO MUCH, it's adorable.
Jesus' teachings and miracles are also very good, and appropriate to teach children. And the creation of the world would make a good children's book too.
But if I just choose very specific bible stories that happen to be free of ****ed-up elements, and only get him books about those... isn't that the same as the first problem I mentioned above- cleaning up the story to make it appropriate for children, and thereby misrepresenting what the bible is? Well... yes... so... yeah if you had a whole collection of such books, and you taught your child to call them "bible stories"... then yeah you do give your kid the impression that the bible is about learning nice life lessons, rather than about, you know, foreskins.
I mean... I don't want to tell my kid the bible is not about foreskins, because that's a lie; it has a shocking amount of foreskin-related content. But he is too young to hear that truth... so... so I just can't teach him about the bible at all?
(Am I overthinking this...?)
Maybe I can get him a book about "God loves you" or about praying or doctrine, something that's Christian but doesn't represent itself as "this is what the bible is about." That's a whole different can of worms, though, because I don't have a "personal relationship with God" and I don't pray and I don't agree with the doctrines that are taught in evangelicalism about the mechanism by which Jesus saves us... so... yes I know there are books that are more like "progressive Christian" and may agree with what I believe, but most Christian children's books are pretty evangelical.
But I'm not going to limit him to only books where I agree with every single thing- that's a bit ridiculous- he needs to be exposed to different viewpoints.
But also, like, isn't it easier to just buy him a book about trucks or kittens or something, so I don't have to do all this analysis about whether the content is harmful to him, and my ex-evangelical feelings about it, and all that?
So...
Well, I guess I'll just keep scrolling through Taobao every 3 months and not buying anything.
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Related:
Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible
Taking My Kid To Church: Cute Sunday School Crafts About Biblical Genocide
I Wish I Was This Angry About Slavery in the Bible
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