What if ALL we did was tell our kids the story?

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Years ago, during an ill-advised—and short—career in youth ministry, I found myself teaching a junior high Sunday school class.

The denominationally approved curriculum didn’t exactly light a fire under my kids. (Not to worry: it wasn’t an Episcopal curriculum!)

One day I realized none of them were able to say why they were Christian, despite having been baptized and confirmed in the church. None could articulate the gospel story, much less tell David from Abraham.

I felt like I was losing them a little more every week. And I came to believe that, as one evangelical leader famously said, it’s a sin to bore kids with the gospel.

So I chucked the curriculum and simply started walking us through the story of the Bible.

Read the rest on GrowChristians.org.

Image: Michelle Tribe on Flickr / CC BY 2.0

How my daughter is teaching me to pray again

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Confession:

I suck at prayer.

I know how to do it. Like many Christians, I know the Lord’s Prayer by heart—in both King James and New International Versions. I’m fluent in the evangelical, freestyle form of prayer, and I’m increasingly conversant in the more liturgical collects of my new(ish) spiritual home, the Anglican tradition.

But outside of church and putting my daughter to bed at night, I pray very little. And I’m not sure how much weight those bedtime prayers carry; most are little more than a laundry list of people and things we want God to bless.

Often when I tell someone I’ll keep them in my prayers, I whisper one under my breath right then and there—just so I (technically) haven’t broken my promise when I fail to pray for them later.

The older I get, the harder it is to pray—or maybe the easier it’s become not to pray.

Maybe as we get older—and as uncertainty mingles with our once-childlike faith—it becomes harder to pray to a God who might not even be there, as that voice in the back of our head reminds us.

Maybe all those self-absorbed prayers of my youth—God, help me find a spouse. Help me find a job. Help me do this. Give me that.—have lost whatever fleeting therapeutic power they once held.

For whatever reason, I don’t pray as much as I used to.

But lately, my daughter is helping me learn to pray again—by reminding me how very little control I actually have at any given moment.

Nothing dramatic has happened… well, not in the grand scheme of things. Like a million other kids, she started kindergarten this fall. That first day, we dressed her in her uniform (thank God for school uniforms—now there’s a genuine prayer), took the obligatory “first day of school” pictures, and sent her on her way.

Just like that.

For the first time in her young life, she spends most of her waking hours apart from us—beyond our ability to carefully orchestrate her life, to filter what she’s exposed to, to regulate how she spends her time.

To put it another way, we’ve lost the illusion of control.

Which is what got me praying again. Normally, I’m too busy trying to write the script to my own life. When I feel things slipping out of control, my first instinct is to tighten my grip, to maintain the illusion.

But there is no illusion to maintain this time. I’m not in control.

I can’t determine how my daughter turns out or what kind of experience she has at school. I can’t ensure she befriends the “right” people—the ones who treat her and others with kindness. I can’t protect her from every bad experience or influence.

I am so not in control.

So I find myself praying while she’s at school. Praying that God will go with her throughout the day. Praying that she will be unfailingly kind—especially to those on the margins. That she will be strong and outspoken. That she’ll be accepted for who she is and that she will accept others for who they are, too.

I find that our bedtime prayers are changing as well. We still ask God to bless the same laundry list of friends and loved ones each night. But we also pray about what kind of person she’ll become. We pray for refugees from Syria. We pray about things great and small.

Prayer is still a spiritual discipline I’m not very good at. Those lingering doubts in the corners of my mind still cause me to wonder if there’s anyone listening on the other end.

But the more I come to grips with my lack of control, the more inclined I am to pray. Prayer settles me, at least for a moment or two. I don’t get any of that illusory control back. But when I pray, I find it just a bit easier to live with my lack of control. I find it easier to let go—even if it’s just for a minute.

Image: Gadini on Pixabay / Public Domain

In which you get to see me on video talking about my kids’ book…

A few weeks ago, my publisher, David C Cook, shot a few videos of me talking about why I wrote my book and how we can tell a better gospel story for our kids.

Here are the first two…

On why I wrote The Story of King Jesus…

On treating Bible stories as if they were isolated moral fables (and why we should read Scripture as a single story)…

Watch for a few more of these videos in the weeks ahead!

To learn more about The Story of King Jesus go here.

Passing on our faith like Moses

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Today I’m writing for More to Life Magazine about how the Israelites shared their faith, how it can shape the way we share our faith with our kids, and how it inspired my book, The Story of King Jesus.

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Last year, my daughter turned four. As a parent, I feel the same burden many Christian parents feel: I want to pass my faith to my children. I want my daughter to know Christ. I want her to walk with him for the rest of her life.

But I also know the odds are against her.

Research shows that a majority of young people who grow up in church disconnect from their faith or their church—or both—later in life (source: Barna). Let that sink in: more than half of those who make a decision for Christ as children will exhibit no meaningful sign of it by the time they reach adulthood.

It’s not for a lack of effort on our part. Over the years, we’ve come up with a host of tools to help us share the gospel—the Sinner’s Prayer, Four Spiritual Laws, the Romans Road…

Anyone remember the Wordless Book—or its relatively more recent incarnation, the Wordless Bracelet?

But our tools and methods for passing on our faith are failing us. More importantly, they’re failing our children.

So what do we do? The answer might just be closer than we think…

Read the rest at More to Life Magazine.

Six things I’ve learned reading The Story of King Jesus to my daughter

Every night before bed, my daughter Elizabeth gets to pick two books for us to read.

As far as she’s concerned, The Story of King Jesus will always be the book I wrote for her—and it is—so it’s been making regular appearances in our bedtime routine. We’ve read it a few dozens times now since our first copy arrived.

For my part, the book is an experiment of sorts. I believe we shortchange the gospel when we reduce it to a handful of Bible verses or condense it into a formula you recite. I believe we shortchange our kids when we fragment biblical narrative into isolated stories and treat them as moral fables. I believe our kids deserve a bigger gospel. They deserve to have the Bible presented as a single, coherent story.

The Story of King Jesus is my attempt to do just that. I want to prove it’s possible to share our faith without shortchanging either the gospel or our kids.

My daughter is 4-1/2. She’s just now taking her first steps of faith. I know better than to declare victory yet. But what I’ve witnessed so far gives me a lot of encouragement.

Here are six things that I’ve learned while reading The Story of King Jesus to my daughter…

1. She can (and will) use the book to delay bedtime. And I’m all right with that.

OK, I don’t know what implications it has for nurturing her faith. But Elizabeth knows how to use the book to stretch out her nightly routine.

The most sacred bedtime rule in our house—we read each book ONCE—is in tatters when she gives me those big, sad eyes and asks me to read “her favorite book” one more time. Yeah…she knows how to play me.

I find myself in less of a rush, too. I’ll confess… I’ve sped through some of her books at bedtime (Goodnightstars-goodnightair-goodnightnoiseseverywhere-THEEND), but I slow down for this one. Because this story matters. I want her to absorb every word.

Even her regular interruptions are more easily welcomed because, well…

2. She asks surprisingly good questions.

The other night, she interrupted me as we got to the exodus part of the story, where God’s people “were slaves in another country.” We’ve read these words many times, but this time Elizabeth wanted to know what slavery is.

So we talked about how some people try to own and control others, how this is part of what we mean when we say “God’s good world is broken.” We talked about how “making the world right and good again” (another phrase from the book) means making it a place where everyone is free, where everyone is treated with respect, and where we love everyone they way God loves us.

I love that she’s asking the kind of questions that will help her connect her emerging faith to the world around her—so she can see that God doesn’t just save us from something; he invites us to become part of making the world right and good again.

Kids need to see that our faith makes a difference in this world, not just the next one. The gospel is about far more than where we go when we die. As Benjamin Corey wrote, it’s not about escaping this world; the gospel about transforming it.

Watching Elizabeth process The Story of King Jesus, I’m reminded that our kids know how to ask good questions. We don’t have to shove answers down their throats. We just have to nurture their innate spiritual curiosity.

3. She is naturally drawn to Jesus.

Elizabeth lights up whenever we get to the part about Jesus. As soon as I read the words “something new happened” and “God sent someone special,” she gets fidgety with excitement. She wants to recite the next part before I can read the words, “God sent his only Son, Jesus.” She wants to take in every picture of Jesus doing “good things everywhere he went,” and she wants to tell me about each one. (Some of her interpretations are more creative than others.)

The Bible is all about Jesus. Jesus fulfills and transforms Israel’s story all at once. The purpose of the Bible is not to serve as some kind of rulebook or user manual, but to point to Jesus, the true logos, the final Word of God.

When we keep Jesus at the center of our gospel, our kids find someone with whom they can connect—perhaps more easily than we do.

4. She’s connecting some of the dots for herself.

The other night, when we got to the part about the kings of Israel—“Some kings were good. Some were bad. Mostly, the kings did whatever they wanted.”—Elizabeth added, “Yeah, just like the very first people.”

She already gets that Israel’s story is an echo of the garden story—God creates people, gives them a home, offers to live with them, but the people go their own way and lose their home. She’s starting to get that this is our story as well, that it’s not just a story about people who lived a long time ago. She’s starting to understand that what God wants for the “very first people,” and what he wants for Israel, is what he wants for us: to make the world right and good again so we can live with him once more.

5. This story can hold her attention.

My daughter doesn’t have a lot of sit in her. I don’t think she’s ever sat through an entire movie—except maybe Frozen, and that was only once. Come bedtime, her ability to focus, such as it is, usually goes out the window. (In other words, she is a normal kid.) But for all the times we’ve read The Story of King Jesus, it still holds her attention. She wants to know the story behind each image. She’s learned parts of the book by heart. She talks about it during the day.

I think we have a tendency to sell our kids short. We turn the gospel into sound bites. We give nuggets of Bible stories, rendered unrealistically cute and reimagined as moral fables, because we don’t think our kids are up for more than that. We should have more confidence in them and in the story we tell—because, well…

6. She—and other kids like her—can grasp the big story of the Bible, if we give them a chance.

I remember years ago teaching a Sunday school class using a “youth-friendly” denominational curriculum. The kids in my class were bored senseless. I couldn’t blame them. So was I.

So we ditched the curriculum; instead, I started telling them the big story of the Bible (because it was clear no one had ever done this for them). The atmosphere changed immediately. Kids who had been sleeping with their eyes open sat bolt upright. They started asking questions. They wanted to know where the story was going.

As Scot McKnight wrote in The King Jesus Gospel, “We need to regain our confidence in the utter power of proclaiming the one story of Jesus.” To this, I would add we also need to regain our confidence in our ability to tell this story well—and in our kids’ ability to embrace it.

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The Story of King Jesus is available at bookstores now.

Available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CBD, Thoughtful Christian and your local independent bookstore.

God made light

This summer was my daughter’s first Vacation Bible School. VBS is a more elaborate production than it used to be, so naturally it comes with an official soundtrack and everything.

The CD has been in rotation in our car ever since. Thankfully, it’s pretty good. The songs are a mix of originals, a couple jazzed up hymns, and a few modern worship tunes. They’re actually kind of catchy.

Most of the songs are about God’s love. I am all for my daughter singing about that. And she does, because she knows every word by heart.

However, there’s one song—or more precisely, one line of one song—that made us pause, quite literally. The Hillsong anthem “Forever Reign,” which opens with these lyrics:

You are good, you are good
When there’s nothing good in me

I didn’t even notice the words till I heard them in my daughter’s voice.

There was something jarring about hearing my 4-year-old sing, “There is nothing good in me.”

So my wife and I started skipping to the next track when “Forever Reign” would come on. Our daughter noticed and asked us why. We told her we didn’t think it was right to say there’s nothing good in us—that even though we all do bad things sometimes, God made us good.

The message seemed to sink in. Now it’s gotten to the point where, if we forget to skip the track, Elizabeth shouts a reminder from the backseat, followed by a lecture on how God made us good.

There are plenty of voices in our culture telling children—girls especially—that they are no good, that they are worthless, useless, of no value. Christian culture shouldn’t be one of them.

It’s not that I don’t believe in sin. I believe every one of us is affected by sin. I believe that in varying ways and to varying degrees, we are both victims of and participants in the brokenness of our world.

But this is not where our story begins. It begins in Genesis 1, not Genesis 3. It begins in a garden, not in a wasteland. It begins with God so taken by the goodness of creation that he cannot stop singing about it.

“It is good.”

“It is very good.”

God’s light permeates everything and everyone. No amount of evil can fully eradicate goodness from creation. No amount of darkness can fully shut out the light.

No matter what else may be true about us, God made us good.

Which is where my friend Matthew Paul Turner’s new children’s book comes in.

God Made Light is my new favorite answer to religion that says, “There is nothing good in you.” This book recaptures the magic and wonder of creation—something all too often lost in our theologizing about sin and our debates about origins. Matthew writes near the beginning:

In flickers and flashes,
in spills and in splashes,
shine began shining across
nothing but blackness.

Light glared and glimmered.
It flared and sparkled.
And wherever light shined,
dark stopped being dark.

Both the story and the vivid art by Matthew Paul Mewhorter connect the light of creation to the light that lives in each of us:

When God said, “Light!”
the universe lit up,
a dazzling display
of big shiny stuff.

And all that light,
every bright golden hue—
did you know that God put that
same light inside you?

God Made Light was rejected by 11 different publishers, so Matthew decided to publish it himself. In its first week, it broke into the top 200 bestsellers on Amazon. (Sometimes, the good guys DO win.)

The other night, I read God Made Light to my daughter for the first time. She chose it again for bedtime the following night. (Matthew, in case you were wondering whether you were capable of writing the kind of book about God that kids would want to read again and again…)

Elizabeth's first choice of bedtime book, two nights running — *Elizabeth’s first choice of bedtime book, two nights running. (And yes, she’s wearing a cape.)*

There are three or four places in the book that talk about God’s light shining inside us. Every time Elizabeth and I get to one of those pages, the expression on her face changes. Her eyes light up (pun intended, sorry). She puts her hands over her heart, as if feeling the warmth of light inside her.

My daughter knows it’s not true when others sing, “There is nothing good in me.” She knows she’s not perfect; but she knows that God made her good, that his light hasn’t stopped shining, and that she radiates that light simply by existing.

Every child needs to hear this. God Made Light should be required bedtime reading.

*(Yes, she’s also wearing a monkey towel on her head.)*

Note: Matthew was kind enough to send me a copy of God Made Light, for which I’m very grateful. I can already tell this is going to be one of those books that stays with my daughter for years to come.

What art can teach us about theology and faith formation

Every year, I take my daughter to ArtPrize—one of the world’s largest art competitions, right in our backyard—hoping she’ll have a different experience with art than than the one I had as a child.

Growing up, art was something I chose to endure rather than appreciate. I viewed trips to the art museum as almost a form of punishment. ArtPrize takes art out of the museum (well, mostly—our favorite piece this year happens to be in the Grand Rapids Art Museum), and in doing so, it’s helped Elizabeth cultivate an enthusiasm for art I never quite managed when I was her age.

She runs from one exhibit to another, yelling, “Let’s go see more art!”

OK, so the artistic quality varies rather widely at ArtPrize. Not everything that catches Elizabeth’s eye would be regarded as fine art by most connoisseurs and curators. Every year, there seems to be an excess of kitsch and recycled scrap metal, especially among the outdoor installations.

But ArtPrize is about inviting everyone into the process of creating and experiencing art—not just the connoisseurs and curators.

Unsurprisingly, the art Elizabeth is most drawn to—the art she talks about the most afterward—is the art she can interact with.

Like “Weave Peace” by Michele Miller-Hansen, a 30-foot dome of pole and fabric outside the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Visitors are asked to write hopeful messages on colorful strips of paper and attach them to the dome, effectively transforming it into something new—something barely resembling the original, unadorned version. It wasn’t one of my favorites until I thought about what it means for an artist to invite others to contribute to—and radically alter—their own work.

weave peace

Or “Intersections” by Anila Quayyum Agha, inspired by the geometrical patterns of Islamic art. Her installation explores the “binaries of public and private, light and shadow, static and dynamic.” The light transforms the entire room, making it part of the exhibit. The artistic experience, in this case, would change from one space to the next. The viewer also becomes part of the exhibit—albeit temporarily—casting their shadow about the space, as Elizabeth gleefully did while dancing around the room.

Art becomes meaningful, transformative, and captivating when we’re able to participate in it—when we’re invited to contribute to it, rather than being forced to just stand back and observe in silence.

I wonder if there’s a lesson to learn from ArtPrize about how we do theology and faith formation.

When we confine theology to the “elites,” when we reduce it to merely an academic discipline, do we lose something along the way? True, there is something to be said for advanced study and expertise. (I wouldn’t want someone who hasn’t mastered Greek or Hebrew translating the Bible for me.) But in our desire to “protect” theology from amateur interference, have we deprived ourselves of the gift of illumination from unexpected sources?

There seems to be little tolerance for imagination and creativity in theology. We act as if such things have no place here, reducing theology to something that resembles scientific analysis, dissecting texts so we can extract objective meaning from them. There is a place for all this. But what about also making room for wonder, imagination, and exploration in our theology? What about welcoming the learned and the unlearned, who turn out not to be so unlearned after all; they just have a different form of knowledge—what if we welcomed them the same table, so we can “do theology” together?

What if we intentionally blurred the lines between art and theology?

What about inviting people to participate more actively in their own faith formation? To experience religion rather than just observe it? One of the things I appreciate most about our (relatively) new spiritual home, the Episcopal Church, is that kids are welcomed as full participants. They are not second-class citizens. They aren’t on probationary membership. They don’t have restricted benefits. My daughter is welcome at the table each week. Worship is participatory—for everyone.

Encouraging her to participate in—and actively shape—the faith to which she belongs is no guarantee she’ll continue to embrace it when she grows up. But if she feels a sense of ownership—if she is encouraged to become a meaningful participant rather than a silent spectator—then it might just stay with her through life.

On reading my book to my daughter for the first time…

Last night I read The Story of King Jesus to my daughter for the first time. Well, I read printouts with not-quite final art that my publisher gave me last week. Still, it was a moment I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

It’s been two years since I shared the first draft of what became The Story of King Jesus. Then Scot McKnight picked it up and shared it on his blog. Many, MANY rewrites later, it was a book proposal…and finally (after more rewrites), an actual book with a publisher and a release date and everything (ahem, March 2015). But it’s always been—and always will be—something I wrote for my daughter. This is how I want to introduce her to our faith.

She’s picked up bits and pieces about Jesus over the years. She knows Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, though she wonders why she’s never seen him in person before. We’ve read some Easter books together, as well as excerpts from The Jesus Storybook Bible and the Children of God Storybook Bible by Desmond Tutu. But this was her first time hearing the whole story of Jesus in one sitting—including the story of Israel, which he brings to fulfillment.

I think one of the reasons we reduce the gospel to a handful precepts or sound bites is because we’re not sure our kids are up for something bigger. Or because we don’t think of the gospel as being primarily a story. Or maybe we worry our kids won’t have the attention span for something more than a few quick bullet points about sin and salvation.

I want to prove these assumptions wrong—because, frankly, this kind of gospel doesn’t work. It doesn’t stick. Stories stay with us for life. Bullet points, not so much. Our kids need a better story.

Last night, my daughter stayed with The Story of King Jesus all the way through, even though it’s longer than most of her bedtime books. She even had me read it a second time. OK, that may have been a bedtime stalling tactic. And granted, she’s a focus group of one. But she’s also a bit younger than the target age group (4 to 8) for my book, so I was thrilled to see how she engaged with it.

She was absorbed in the story and the art (thank you, Nick Lee). When we got to the part about the crucifixion, she grabbed her owl nightlight and held it close to the page so she could look more closely. On our second time through, she started repeating some of the key lines—completely on her own.

I have no illusions that everything got through on the first or even the second read. But she was absorbing, processing, engaging with the story. After we finished, she said it was her favorite story she’s ever read. (Though earlier that evening, she said the meatless chicken nuggets we had for dinner were her favorite food she’s ever had. The night before, peanut butter sandwiches were her favorite.)

As for the “most clueless dad” moment of the night… afterward she asked me, “When will it be put together?” I assumed she was asking a deep spiritual question about the state of the world. After all, God fixing the world—putting it back together—is one of the recurring themes of The Story of King Jesus. So I proceeded to stumble my way through a response…until she cut me off and said, “No, dad. When’s the book going to be put together?”

But she also asked me when Jesus is coming back, which gave us a chance to talk about how we get to be part of making the world right and good until he returns. We talked about how God gave us a job to do: love each other with all we’ve got.

The bottom line is, last night, I got to talk to my daughter about bringing heaven to earth.

I know it can be terrifying to talk to your kids about faith. We’re afraid we’ll say the wrong thing and screw it up for them. But it can also be a wonderful, rewarding experience. It can be like bringing a little bit of heaven to earth right here and now—especially when we let go the pressure to extract a decision from our kids now and just tell them the story and watch it begin to click in their own imaginations.

I think—I hope and I pray—that’s what started happening for my daughter last night.

UPDATE: I just found out you can already pre-order The Story of King Jesus through Amazon…

We need feminism because my daughter thinks most TV shows are for boys

Most weekday mornings, I get my daughter up. It’s a frenzied ritual of brushing teeth, combing hair, trying to persuade her that wool sweaters aren’t the greatest choice for the middle of summer (even in Michigan), and finally—after a series of delicate and sometimes tense negotiations—helping her get dressed in her chosen outfit. Then I make my way to my basement office and start my day.

Weekends are a different story. The two of us head downstairs together—usually before her mom and baby brother get up. We eat cereal and she picks something for us to watch on TV. Some mornings it’s Pingu. Sometimes she asks for “something on Hulu.” (I think she mostly just likes saying the word Hulu.) Sometimes it’s Phineas and Ferb. (Which, I’ll be honest… I have mixed feelings about, mostly because of how the older sister is portrayed, reinforcing the popular caricature of sisters as bossy, controlling, and otherwise inept. Not the picture of sisterhood that I want to paint for Elizabeth, who, as a new big sister, already has the makings of being a wonderful teacher and mentor to her younger brother.)

A few weekends ago, we were well into our Saturday ritual. She was about to choose something to watch when a look of apprehension came over her not-quite-four-year-old face.

“Daddy,” she asked, “is this show for boys?”

I was totally caught off guard. Where did my daughter get the idea that certain shows are “for boys”—and that she can’t watch them? It certainly wasn’t from us. My wife and I are intentional about teaching her that girls and boys are equal, that nothing is off limits to her because of her gender.

We go to a church where women can serve equally alongside men. Our current priest happens to be a man, but women hold a number of visible leadership roles—on staff, on the vestry (think: elder board), and at almost every level of ministry.

When we watch sports (which isn’t that often), we try to watch a balance of men’s and women’s events. We’ve even talked about taking Elizabeth to Canada next year to see the Women’s World Cup, if we can swing it.

When it comes to TV shows, we look for ones with strong female characters. But we don’t push our daughter toward stereotypically “girly” shows. Nor do we discourage her from watching shows that are supposedly “for boys.”

So where did she get this notion? What gave my daughter the idea that she can’t watch some shows because they’re for boys only? Maybe she got it from TV itself.

Yesterday, Rachel Held Evans shared 35 compelling reasons why we all need feminism. Many of them are sobering, like the fact that 1 in 4 American women experience some form of domestic violence. Or the fact that 80% of 10 year-old girls say they’ve gone on a diet.

Ten year-old girls, already being told their bodies are the only thing of value they have—and even then, only if they’re the “right” size.

Rachel shared another reason which, at first glance, may seem a bit more trivial by comparison. That is, until you consider the impact it has on a young girl’s perspective. In 2011, only 11% of the protagonists in films were female. This figure is only slightly better for children’s TV shows. Yes, there’s Dora and Kai-Lan. But there’s also Bob the Builder, Daniel Tiger, Super Why, Elmo, Phineas and Ferb, and a host of other lead characters who are male.

One study found that only 30% of the characters in children’s shows are female. And female characters are far more likely to be sexualized and/or presented in a way that glamorizes a narrow and unhealthy notion of beauty—even in children’s shows. (Case in point: Sofia the First.) To quote the study, “Females, when they are on screen, are still there to provide eye candy to even the youngest viewers.”

Even in 2014, the overwhelming message of children’s entertainment is that girls like my daughter are little more than props in a man’s world.

(So much for feminism being a capitulation to the dominant culture.)

That Saturday, I told my daughter she didn’t have to worry about whether the show she wanted to watch was “for boys” or not. If she wanted to watch it (and as long as there wasn’t any legitimate reason not to—e.g. violence), then it was for her.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have to tell her this.

Patriarchy is not natural. Our daughters are not born into this world thinking they’re inferior or subordinate to men. They get that idea because that’s what the dominant culture tells them.

It’s what we tell them in our movies and TV shows.

It’s what we tell them when we objectify their bodies to sell everything from hamburgers to sex.

It’s what we tell them when we tolerate a 23% wage gap for a woman doing the same job as man.

It’s what we tell them when we trivialize and dismiss the reality of sexual assault—something a quarter of all female college students face.

Patriarchy isn’t natural. It’s learned. And it’s time we start telling our daughters a better story.

Jesus died because you didn’t clean your room (and other things we tell our kids)

958815404_6ec61210a1_b — This kid obviously cleaned her room for Jesus.

Last week was VBS at my church. It was the first time my daughter was old enough to participate. I filled in as a backup crew leader. Think small group leader, but with more herding kids from one activity to the next. Also, pretending to know the motions to the songs, which occasionally meant spinning in circles while everyone else was jumping up and down.

The curriculum we were using* was all about God’s unconditional love. Which is a great theme to highlight, especially when you’ve only got a couple hours a night to engage kids, many of whom have no other connection to the church. If I could choose just one message to share with kids, this would be it. (Even if I can’t get the hand motions right.)

One night, we were supposed to talk about the fact that God loves us even when we do wrong. The curriculum did a nice job walking through the story of Jesus’ death on the cross. It also had a few suggestions for how to explain why Jesus died. One of them was to share some examples of sin that kids can relate to.

Like not cleaning your room.

Why did Jesus die? Answer: because your room is a mess and you didn’t tidy it up like you were supposed to.

I get that we have to keep things simple for kids. But is this really the best way to explain Jesus’ death? Is there no other way we can unpack for kids the idea that the world is broken and in need of rescue and repair?

Do we trivialize the gospel when we make it about “sins” like not cleaning your room? Do we sell our kids short by not telling them a more meaningful story?

Later that night, I saw proof that the kids in my group were itching for a better story, that they didn’t need a trivialized, oversimplified concept of sin in order for the gospel to make sense.

The makers of the curriculum wanted to address real issues that kids face, and they wisely included bullying as one of the featured topics. During the discussion time that evening, the change in my group was palpable. Suddenly, these kids—who wouldn’t take anything seriously all week, who spent the whole time cracking jokes and posturing for each other—got very serious. They listened. Each had a story to tell. Multiple stories, actually. You could see the hurt in their eyes. Each of them had been bullied at some point. Heck, they even wanted to know if I had been bullied as a kid. (Asking me a serious question—that was a first.)

Our kids understand the world is not how it should be. They don’t need us to soft-pedal it for them. They don’t need to be fed trivial examples of sin in order to understand Jesus’ death.

We don’t need to treat our kids as if they’re porcelain china, as if they’ll shatter into a million pieces if we’re honest about the way the world really is. Just ask them if they’ve ever had a run-in with a bully, and you’ll realize: they know what sin is.

They deserve a gospel that makes sense in the real world. And that, I think, is the main shortcoming of a primarily legal or transactional approach to the gospel. It reduces sin to a theological abstraction, one in which not cleaning your room is every bit as serious as murder or rape or bullying. It says naively that “all sin is sin,” when all sins are not, in fact, created equal. (For more on the problems of equalizing sin, see this post by R.L. Stollar.)

This, by the way, is one reason why I’m increasingly drawn to the Christus Victor view of the atonement, why I believe it makes the most sense of what Jesus did on the cross (knowing that the significance of Jesus’ death cannot be reduced to a single theory of atonement), and why I think it opens the door to sharing a better gospel story.

Christus Victor says we are captives of a broken world. Yes, some of that darkness resides in us. We are both victims and culprits. We are trapped in a cycle of sin and death, but we also contribute in ways both small and large. Christus Victor says that Jesus’ sacrifice was God’s victory over sin and death, as opposed to appeasement for the trivial “sins” of a 4-year-old who doesn’t clean her room.

Our kids deserve a better story.

(Although, if it will get my almost-4-year-old to clean her room…)

Tag: parenting

What if ALL we did was tell our kids the story?

Read the rest on GrowChristians.org.

How my daughter is teaching me to pray again