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| Book cover for "The Berenstain Bears: The Very First Easter." |
I got this book for my kids: The Berenstain Bears: The Very First Easter. Here's my review of it.
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Summary
This is a book which gives a very basic outline of these events from the bible: Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, praying in the garden of Gethsemane, Judas's betrayal, Jesus being questioned by Pilate, the crucifixion, the angel at the tomb, and Jesus appearing to his disciples again after his resurrection. Each of these events is described pretty briefly, just a few sentences.
All the characters are depicted as bears because this is the Berenstain Bears universe.
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My take on this book
My son is at the age where he's learning to read. My daughter is at the age where she likes to tear books with her fast little hands. This book is not for her, lol. It's paperback.
I'm starting to teach my son bible stories, but he doesn't know that many of them yet. We don't go to church, and yeah, you know from all my other blog posts that I have a lot of issues with how bible stories are typically presented to children. I want him to know the stories, but I want to avoid all the problematic messages I got from these stories when I was growing up evangelical.
For the Easter story specifically, my 2 main concerns in telling this story to kids are:
- How much graphic violence is shown when Jesus is tortured and crucified?
- Does it say "Jesus died for your sins" or anything like that?
The Easter story, as told in the bible, is extremely violent. Jesus is beaten, flogged, a crown of thorns is stabbed onto his head, he is forced to carry his cross, his hands and feet are nailed to the cross, and then after he dies, a soldier stabs a spear into his side.
It's a lot!
In my experience, Christians are a little bit too enthusiastic about how graphically violent this all was. Making a big deal about how Jesus needed to die the worst death ever, to pay for all our sins. How it was so horrific but he chose to do it out of love for us, and we should feel really really bad about our sins that did this to him.
I don't view it this way any more. I've read stuff from black Christians and/or feminist Christians who do NOT see it as a good thing that Jesus [supposedly] suffered the maximum possible amount of suffering. In the book, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree," James Cone says that Jesus was lynched. American Christians should all read James Cone. I've read articles from feminist Christians about why it's harmful to portray Jesus' suffering as a good thing- this has direct consequences in the way that women are socialized to put up with bad behavior from men, and marginalized people are told to accept their oppression because suffering is good for them and God will reward them in the long run- like, hey, it's not cool to tell people that suffering is a good thing because it makes them like Jesus- how about instead, we make society better so that people don't have to suffer in the first place?
Okay but can we get back to talking about the Berenstain Bears? How does this book portray the violence of Jesus' death?
This book doesn't really show any of the violence at all- it just says Jesus was hung on a cross, and died, and the illustration shows the silhouettes of people on the three crosses, but it doesn't show any violence beyond that. No blood. Nothing at all about Jesus being beaten/flogged.
I think this approach is very good. I want my son to know the basic plot points of the story, but I don't think there's any need to show all the graphic violence to kids.
And for my second concern: Does this book say anything about "Jesus died for your sins"? Because I don't want to teach my kids that.
No, "The Berenstain Bears: The Very First Easter" doesn't say "Jesus died for your sins." It pretty much just gives a simple overview of the story, and doesn't get into any questions about why things happened or what they mean. It doesn't say anything at all about what Jesus' death and resurrection mean for us. Seriously. Nothing. It doesn't say anything about sin. There's no "so we need to believe in Jesus," nope, nothing like that at all. It's actually quite surprising.
I feel that it's really good to have a book like this, which simply tells the story without also presenting an interpretation from some particular brand of Christianity.
My son asked me a lot of "why" questions, while reading this. Why did Judas betray Jesus? Why did people want to kill Jesus? I told him a few different possible reasons, but said we don't really know for sure, and people have different interpretations.
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In which I make a joke about Catholics
In the part about the Last Supper, the book says that Jesus said, "This bread and wine is like my body and my blood." I then remarked, "I guess this wasn't written by Catholics" and then my husband and son both said "what?" so I guess I shouldn't make any clever little remarks that reference obscure debates within Christianity like that. Turns out my household is not the right crowd for that.
(Catholics believe that when Christians have communion, the bread and wine *are* the body and blood of Jesus, rather than being *like* the body and blood of Jesus. I don't understand what that even means. I always went to churches that believed it was a symbol. Note that in the actual bible, Jesus says "this is my body" and "this is my blood"- referring to the bread and wine- so it's an interesting choice to add the word "like" when telling this version of the story.)
And I suppose I could make a lot of little observations about which details this book includes, and how it words things, and what that says about the brand of Christianity it's coming from. But I don't think that really matters- as I said above, my main concerns are the amount of violence, and whether it says we need to feel guilty about how our sin killed Jesus. This book is very good on those two points. It tells the basic story, it doesn't get into any graphically violent details, and it doesn't say anything at all about what it means for us.
I certainly have opinions on what Jesus' death and resurrection mean for us- I'm a Christian, of course I have opinions on that- but let's just teach kids the story first, before getting into that.
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Conclusion
I like this book because it's simple, and therefore doesn't get into any of the problematic stuff that Christian children's books often get into. It gives a brief overview of the bible story of Jesus' death and resurrection. This is what I want; I want my son to know the story. It doesn't say anything at all about what Jesus' death and resurrection mean. I like that. For now I just want my son to know the story. There will be plenty of time in the future to think about what it means. Maybe I'll spend my whole life doing that.
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Related:
Reviews of Christian Children's Books
"Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH)