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| Book cover for "Children of God Storybook Bible." |
If you've been following my blog for a while, you will know that I don't like how bible stories are typically presented to kids, but also I want to read books to my son to introduce him to the bible. I've tried out a few kids' bible story books and reviewed them on my blog. Here's a review of Children of God Storybook Bible, by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
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Content
This book contains 56 bible stories:
- 24 stories (43%) are from the Old Testament
- 32 stories (57%) are from the New Testament. (Of these, 27 are about Jesus.)
As for the actual bible, a quick google tells me that the Old Testament is about 75% of the bible. Now, from a Christian perspective you can certainly make a case that the stories about Jesus are the most important part of the bible, so maybe it makes sense to have these overrepresented in children's bibles. But, still, it misrepresents what the bible is.
I think it's common that people learn about the bible through this kind of "telling stories to children" method, and so they never find out that the real bible is so much weirder and, frankly, ****ed-up than what we see in children's books. This bothers me greatly.
As for which stories were chosen to include in "Children of God Storybook Bible," mostly it's the ones you'd expect, you got your creation of the world, Joseph's coat of many colors, Moses and the burning bush, etc. But there were a few surprising inclusions and omissions:
Surprising inclusion: Naboth's vineyard (1 Kings 21). Wowwww I don't think I've EVER seen the story of Naboth's vineyard included in a children's bible! What were they thinking??? Here's the gist of it: King Ahab wanted to buy a vineyard from a guy named Naboth, but Naboth refused to sell. So Queen Jezebel arranged to have Naboth falsely accused of cursing God and the king, and executed. Then Ahab took his vineyard. Then God sent the prophet Elijah to Ahab to prophesy that he and Jezebel would be punished for this- that they would be killed. Ahab made a show of repenting, so God amended it to say this punishment would happen to Ahab's household in the time of Ahab's son instead.
WHAT? I mean, yeah, this is a good example of how most bible stories are like, WHAT? They're not cute little morality lessons. Why would you tell the story of Naboth's vineyard to little kids? My first thought when I saw this here was "oh, maybe this is good because it pulls back the curtain a bit and shows kids that the bible isn't a bunch of nice stories." But then the second thing I thought was, "imagine you're a little kid, and the way the bible has always been presented to you is as if it's a bunch of nice stories, and then you read this, and you have to force yourself to believe that this is a nice story- wouldn't you end up even more messed-up?"
Reminds me of my thoughts, when I was a little kid, about the story of Jacob stealing his brother Esau's blessing (Genesis 27). This is a common one in little kids' bibles (it is not in "Children of God Storybook Bible" though). Basically, Esau was the older twin and so there was a tradition that their father, Isaac, should recite a blessing for Esau. But Jacob put on Esau's clothes and pretended to be him (Isaac had bad eyesight) and tricked Isaac into blessing him instead.
Hmm, sounds like what Jacob did was wrong, doesn't it? Also kinda messed-up that he took advantage of Isaac's bad eyesight and tricked him.
But the way these stories are told to little kids, Jacob is one of the "good guys" and Esau is a "bad guy." Many many times in the bible, the three patriarchs of the Israelite people are listed: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Whereas, Esau, apparently God just didn't like Esau.
So when I was a little kid, and heard this story of how Jacob stole Esau's blessing, I didn't think "wow that was a really bad thing that Jacob did." I wasn't able to even have a thought in that direction, because I knew that Jacob was a "good guy" and Esau was a "bad guy." I remember I was a teenager when this dawned on me- hey, wait a minute, lying to his father and stealing the blessing which was really important to his brother, those are bad things to do, aren't they? Aren't they? Why has no one pointed that out before??? I remember asking myself, "wait a minute, all the times I heard this story in Sunday school, what cute moral lesson did they even claim it was meant to teach???" (I *think* it might have been, Jacob was a trickster, but God loved him anyway- how wonderful that even though we are all imperfect, we can still be part of God's plan.)
So my fear is that including the story of Naboth's vineyard is NOT going to make kids realize "oh, the bible is not a bunch of nice stories about how we need to love God, and God always saves his followers." Instead, kids are going to hear it as "we know the bible is a bunch of nice stories, and therefore this story about Naboth being falsely accused and executed is also a nice story which teaches us a nice lesson about God." And you twist your brain in order to make yourself believe that, and you end up with even more exvangelical trauma.
You may think I'm reading way too much into this. Maybe I am. I grew up evangelical and really took them seriously when they said the bible is "God's love letter to us" and we need to read the bible every day and apply it to our lives, we need to memorize the bible as much as we can, and the bible is inerrant. I really truly bought into all that.
I'm not raising my son in that kind of environment, obviously. So he can hear these bible stories and be fine and he won't get trauma from them, because to him they are just stories. No one is teaching him that the bible is meant to be an authority over his life and he has to force himself to believe it is THE moral standard.
Moving along:
Surprising omissions: "Children of God Storybook Bible" does NOT include the story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac (Genesis 22), and it does NOT include the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho (Joshua 6). These are staples of children's bibles; I'm surprised they are not here. But, also, holy crap, I HATE SO MUCH the way these stories are taught to kids. It's GOOD that they're not included in this book.
Abraham and Isaac- God tells Abraham to go up on a mountain and sacrifice his son. Abraham obeys, and just as he is picking up the knife to kill his son, an angel intervenes and says not to really do it, it was a test, and God is pleased with Abraham for passing the test, being willing to kill his own son at God's command. Hey, little kids, what a lovely story, it teaches us that we should always obey God. It was good that Abraham was willing to kill his son, this makes him a role model of faith (rather than a dangerous person who should be locked up, my GOD). Your parents should kill you too if God ever tells them!
Joshua and the battle of Jericho- After God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, God led them to the promised land, where people were already living, so obviously they needed to kill those people and take their homes. The first city they came to was Jericho. God told the Israelites to trust him, and that he would help them win their battles. And that they needed to march around the city for 7 days, and the walls would miraculously collapse. So they did that, and then they killed every person in Jericho- men, women, and children (except Rahab's family because she helped them). Wow, little kids, what a wonderful story! It teaches us that we should always obey God, even when God tells us to do something that doesn't make sense, like marching around the walls of a city, haha that was so silly, wasn't it? Such a good story, it teaches us that God keeps his promises. God promised to give the Israelites the land, and he did! And they killed everyone who was living there! Such a great story! Such a nice moral lesson for us!
You think I'm joking, but I'm not. It really is that bad.
So, it's surprising that these 2 stories aren't in this book, but also, that's a good thing.
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I don't like how each story ends with a little prayer
At the end of each bible story, there's a little one-line prayer.
- Many of these are pretty typical bible-lessons-for-kids fare: "Dear God, thank you for giving us each other to love." "Dear God, help me to trust your promises."
- Some of them come across a bit more social-justice-oriented than what I have typically seen in children's bibles: "Dear God, help me to bring freedom to all of your children." "Dear God, let me love all people no matter where they come from." "Dear God, help me to protect the powerless." I like this!
But: I strongly dislike this framing device. It reads like each of these bible stories can be summed up into a tidy little prayer; like each bible story teaches us a nice little lesson about how to be a better person, or about some wonderful thing God has done.
To be fair, a lot of the stories about Jesus actually can be summed up that way. The stories about Jesus are much less likely to be problematic compared to the violent Old Testament stories. So I'm fine with presenting most stories about Jesus to kids as "here's a nice lesson we learn from it."
And actually, maybe the issue I'm having with "Children of God Storybook Bible" isn't so much that the individual stories picked for this book are problematic, but that I'm so extremely aware of which large sections of the bible have been skipped. (For example, there's nothing at all from the books of Joshua or Judges in "Children of God Storybook Bible.") See that's the difficulty with having a "children's bible" with content that spans the whole bible- it gives the impression of being a children's version of the bible, rather than what it actually is, which is an extremely careful and deliberate cherry-picking of individual bible stories which can be kinda-sorta salvaged into something like a nice kids' story, unlike the majority of the bible. That's why I feel good about the books I bought for my son which tell only 1 bible story each. If it's not pretending to be the whole bible, then you don't have the dilemma of "just skip the messed-up parts" vs "tell the messed-up parts to kids and pretend they're not messed-up."
(But actually, aren't I doing the same thing? I am very carefully picking books for my son, each book containing 1 single bible story that I deem appropriate for children. Once I accumulate a whole bunch of these books, won't I have a collection that spans the whole bible while also having giant glaringly-obvious gaps, just like "Children of God Storybook Bible" does? Uh. Yeah this is why I'm having such a hard time figuring out how to introduce bible stories to my son.)
Also, above the title of each bible story, there's a sort of summary phrase- for example, the story about Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden is titled "Leaving the Garden", and above the title there's the text "God loves us even when we do wrong." The story about Jacob's dream with the angels on a ladder is titled "A Wonderful Dream" and the text above it is "God speaks to Jacob." Sort of ... taking each story and summarizing it in a way that puts a positive spin on it. I also do not like this.
I feel like, if it was just telling the stories, maybe I can work with that. But summing each story up with a tidy little prayer- no, I don't like that.
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As an example, here's the story of Noah's ark, as told by "Children of God Storybook Bible"
God begins again
Noah's Ark
Genesis 6-9
Before long, people started fighting and hurting one another terribly. God wept that they were not enjoying the lovely earth he had made. Finally, he said, "I must make a new beginning. I will send a flood to cover the whole earth."
But one man named Noah was kind and did what was right.
God told Noah to build a big boat called an ark. Then God said, "Gather all your family and two of every kind of animal, bird, and insect." God sent the rain, and Noah led everyone into the ark. For forty days and forty nights it rained so hard that the water covered even the highest mountains.
Boy, did it smell inside the ark! And the noise! The ROARing and the BAAing, the NEIGHing and the MOOing! But-- amazingly-- everyone got along. Yes, even the lion lay down with the lamb.
At last the rain stopped. Noah sent out a dove in search of land. When the bird returned with an olive leaf, Noah and his family cheered. Noah thanked God for saving them.
God told Noah, "I promise not to send another flood to cover the whole earth." And God made a beautiful rainbow so people would never forget his promise.
Dear God, thank you for rainbows and for keeping your promise to us.
You see what I mean about how this is presented as a nice story that teaches us a nice lesson? God felt that everyone in the world- the entire population of the earth- was so evil they deserve to DIE (except Noah and his family), so God sent a flood to kill them all, and we tell kids that this is a good thing.
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| Meme that says "Am I the only one around here who doesn't want to teach my kid it's good when God kills everyone on earth?" Link to meme generator. |
I want to teach my kid, if someone claims that an entire population, an entire city, an entire ethnic group, is so evil they all deserve to die, to NEVER believe that. That is NEVER true, and you should never trust anyone who would claim that. Even if it's God. (See also: If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No)
In Sunday school, Christians teach this story to kids, and they definitely tell kids that unfortunately everyone was so evil that God needed to kill them all, but then the Sunday school lesson glides right by that without questioning it, and moves on to the fun imagery of all those zoo animals together, and the nice lesson about trusting God.
Of all the bible stories which are commonly taught to kids, "Noah's ark" is definitely the worst one.
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The art is very good
Many different artists contributed to this book. Each bible story has a different art style, and the art is very well done.
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Lots of words on each page
My son is in preschool, and the amount of words on each page is a bit much for him. Maybe this is more of an elementary-school-level book. Most of the bible stories are only one 2-page spread. For a kid who mainly likes to look at pictures in his books, it's not a high enough pictures-to-words ratio.
This doesn't really bother me much because I can skip some of it if it's too long, or summarize it, or stop in the middle and ask him something about the story. To make it more interesting for him.
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My son's reaction
As I said, this book has a lot of words on each page, so I think he wasn't fully able to pay attention and understand most of the stories. At some points, though, he did ask some good questions. He asked why Pharaoh made the Israelites slaves. He asked why God parted the Red Sea. When I read about God giving Moses the 10 Commandments, my son pointed at Moses and asked, "Is that God?" and I said no it's Moses, God is everywhere but we can't see Them, and my son kept saying "why?"
So even though I'm all exvangelically thinking to myself "humph I don't like how this book presents the bible like it's a bunch of nice stories", when my son asks questions about it, inevitably I will reveal to him that many of these are not nice stories. Because my son is in an environment where we are treating bible stories as stories rather than morality lessons that have authority over our lives, this won't be harmful to him. So, as much as I'm complaining about the book in this blog post, I was able to read it to my son and make it a good thing for him... but I just wish I had a book that would just be a good thing on its own, without me needing to do all this, uh, overthinking.
And, sometimes the God of the bible is a bad guy. I think that will help answer a lot of the "why" questions.
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God's pronouns
This book uses he/him pronouns for God. Which is fine, because the bible does too. But, what's a queer Christian gotta do to get a children's book that calls God She or They?
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Conclusion
I'm not impressed with this book because, like all other children's bibles I've seen, it presents the bible as if it's a bunch of nice stories which teach us nice morality lessons and nice concepts about God. There are things this book does well- the art is good, and I like how some of the moral lessons were related to social justice concepts like protecting those who are powerless, and helping immigrants. But overall this isn't how I want to teach my kids about the bible.
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Related:
Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible
2 Wrong Ways to Write Bible Stories For Kids
"Who Is My Neighbor?" (Kids' Book Review)
"Our God: A Shapes Primer" (baby book review)