Fairy Tales

Calvin & Hobbes
Calvin: "Dad, what makes wind?"
Dad: "Trees sneezing."
Calvin: "Really?"
Dad: "No, but the truth is more complicated."
Calvin (later, to Hobbes): "The trees are really sneezing today."

Should it surprise us that so many teens who have grown up in the church have a tough time seeing God as “real”? I mean, look at how the children’s ministries that they grew up in portray God. I never grew up in church but it seems to me that teaching the Bible to kids as if it’s a sort of fairy tale book with a host of fantastical stories is counterproductive in the long run. I suspect it gives kids a false image of God and the Bible as they grow into adulthood.

Sunday school stories don’t look significantly different to a child than the stories their parents read them at bed-time or the Disney movies, other than the fact that in the Bible the characters are people instead of talking donkeys (maybe that isn’t such a good example).

It seems to me that children often grow up viewing the Bible stories in the same realm as Santa Clause. Both are fun whimsical stories that adults have assured them are true. But what happens as children grow up and find out that they were effectively lied to about the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and even the big guy - Santa. They “grow out of” their belief in the Tooth Fairy, why should we expect Noah’s ark to be any different when it’s taught in the same way.

When we teach kids the Bible as if it were a glorified Aesop’s Fables, they’ll treat it as such sooner or later.

I think the Bible loses its power when we make its stories suitable for children when they often are not. For example, on the walls of many children’s ministry rooms is a scene depicting the ark w/ some animals in it and the whole thing is floating in a bunch of calm blue water – and the elephants are smiling. That’s the children’s version.


Have you ever seen video footage of a really bad flood on TV? There's some pretty horrific footage out there from the tsunami back in 2004 that occured in the Indian Ocean. The tsunami was unbelievably devistating, something like a 9.1 on the Richter Scale. When it was all said and done almost 230,000 people were dead or missing. The earthquake was so violent (the second largest on record) that in caused other earthquakes around the globe as far away as Alaska. And yet, if you believe the Bible, it was nothing compared to the flood.

It’s nothing like the paintings. The water is black with the mud, grime and filth. There’s chaos all around as trees, people, and houses float by. Screaming mothers try desperately to cling to their helpless children. Doesn’t look quite the same when you paint it that way on the children’s ministry wall.


I don’t pretend to know the solution. I’m not speaking as a children’s ministry expert by any means. Unfortunately, I only tend to see its affects on the guys and girls who have grown up with this. But I don’t see this problem so much in Judaism, at least not in its ancient form, so I’m confident it can be done better. Maybe part of it is that Jews tend to read the stories as part of their own history whereas Christians can sort of view the Old Testament as a land “far, far away.”

I wonder if we might be able to learn from how they used to do “children’s ministry” in ancient Judaism. On the first day of class the rabbi would smear honey on the child’s fingers, or hands, or writing slate. Now back then people ate dirt and gravel so honey was like the sweetest most delicious thing you could imagine. And the rabbi would say to the children, who are around 6 years old, something like, “Now lick the honey, and may you never forget that the words of God are like honey. May you never forget that the words of God are the most enjoyable, most pleasurable thing you could ever have. May you be like Ezekiel who tasted the scroll and said it tastes sweet like honey.”

I don’t know if that’s how you see the Bible, but I can say that most teens don’t see the Bible that way. I wish they did.

Calvin: "Dad, why are old photographs black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?"
Dad: "Of course they did. In fact, those old photographs ARE in color. It's just that the WORLD was black and white then.
Calvin: "Really?"
Dad: "Yep, the world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: "Oh."
Dad: "Well, truth is stranger than fiction."
Calvin: "Then why are old paintings in color? If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted that way?"
Dad: "Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane."
Calvin: "BUT... but how could they possibly have painted in color? Wouldn't their paints have been in shades of gray back then?"
Dad: "Of course, but they changed color like everything else in the '30s.
Calvin: "So why didn't black and white photos turn color too?"
Dad: "Because they were color photographs of black and white, remember?"