So, I had my group of four adorable and brilliant sixth graders over for dinner on Thursday night. We enjoyed Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (I ate some leftovers directly out of the pot and one of the girls informed me that eating dinner directly out of the pot is what "young people with careers" normally do) and sampled Sticky Toffee Pudding Ice Cream, which we awarded a respectable 8 out of 10 (we rate a new ice cream each Thursday), before settling into our weekly theological discussion.
So far, these girls have asked how Jesus can be eternal if He died on the cross, wrestled with the problem of evil, shared how the Spirit is helping them say no to sin, and posited that Jesus may have had colic as a baby because smart babies sometimes have colic. I think they're on their way to becoming the next Luther, Wesley, Calvin, and Edwards (hopefully without rejecting the book of James, embracing Christian perfectionism, burning people at the stake, or being preoccupied with spiders.)
Thursday's discussion was predictably thoughtful and lively. One of the girls asked a great question: How did we get different races if everyone came from Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve were white?
We talked about how the Bible doesn't say what Adam and Eve's skin tone was like, which led the girls to pull out my children's Bibles and we all lamented the fact that Adam and Eve always look pretty Nordic. (The girls also think it's funny that Eve is always pictured with conveniently long hair.)
This got me thinking about children's Bibles and if they might do more harm than good. My bright little sixth grader has probably thought that Adam and Eve were white for a long time. I doubt anyone actually taught her this, but those pictures in children's Bibles made a lasting impression and she assumed that Adam and Eve looked like the picture in her Bible. Since we don't know what Esther, Moses, or Jesus really looked like (except that they probably weren't the chestnut brown haired Europeans pictured in many Bibles), is it all right to put false images into the minds of kids?
On the one hand, children's picture Bibles introduce young kids to God and His plan, keep them interested and engaged in the story, and are sensitive to their developmental stage. It's difficult to get young kids to sit and listen if there is nothing visual to keep their attention. On the other hand, these Bibles can also lead kids to develop false conceptions of historical figures and events (this may explain why so many kids believe that the forbidden fruit was an apple) and perhaps even encourage a subtle racism (given that most of the heroes of the Bible look pretty European.)
And then there's the issue of drawing the Son of God. Even though people have been painting Jesus for centuries, there's something about this that makes me uncomfortable. No painting, picture or sculpture can accurately present what Jesus really looked like. If it's idolatry to present God as something other than what He is, I wonder if it's right to even attempt to pictorially represent Jesus. And even if this isn't idolatry, I'm concerned that so many kids picture the Son of God as a handsome and very clean guy with long flowing hair and a red sash.
As a director of children's ministries, I'm starting to dig myself into a hole. We use a children's Bible in our preschool class every week and if I really believe what I just wrote, I need to start thinking about some storytelling alternatives that will present the Bible accurately and keep in mind our preschoolers' two second attention span.
One idea I'm tossing around is using pictures of objects to tell the story instead of pictures of people. For instance, if a teacher is telling the kids about Jesus feeding the five thousand, he might show them pictures of fish, loaves, and baskets (or better yet, show the kids real fish and bread) instead of showing a picture of Jesus with the fish and loaves. I think the lack of pictures may allow the kids to develop a more biblical conception of Jesus.
What do you think? Should children's Bibles be outlawed? Should I be fired for even suggesting such a thing? Is there a way to pictorially represent the people of the Bible in an accurate and helpful manner? I'd love to hear your opinions and ideas.
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Hmmm...it's a good question! I get most irritated by the depictions of Jesus. There are pretty serious problems here relating not only to ethnicity, but gender as well. Not only is Jesus always white with blonde hair (which is stupid), but he's got product in the hair, he's wearing a dress, and he only hangs out with kids and lambs. This creates two problems: (1) kids begin to think that there are a bunch of white people in the Bible (which encourages them to read Scripture with through a Western hermeneutical grid), and (2) they think Jesus is weak. It's tough to see this Jesus casting people into hell for eternity. Anyways, I think visual depictions are ok if they are true to life. Think about the possible payoff here. What if you did culturally accurate portrayals of biblical events? What if Jericho wasn't as big as New York, but was instead quite small? What if the nativity scene reflected the text of Luke? What if we made Paul look unimpressive? If one took the considerable time to do such illustrations, kids would not just gain accurate information, they would actually cultivate a hermeneutical framework that really makes sense of the Bible!
just a thought
Apparently my blog doesn't allow anyone who even slightly disagrees with me to post their comments:)
Here are some really good thoughts from Andrew. Both Andrew and Jeff have given me some great ideas to chew on and I'll try to respond later today.
As usual Jenny, you've raised a good question. Unusually on the other hand, I don't think I necessarily agree with you. Well, not all the way anyway.
Certainly I think that the inaccurate representations of Jesus are lamentable. One wonders if the wave of scholarship that has been trying to take the Jewishness of Jesus so seriously will begin to have its impact on children's Bibles. Perhaps they'll even take seriously mediterranean agriculture...
In any case, I think you might be throwing the Biblical baby out with the bath water. Perhaps it might do well to try to explain to kids at some point that Jesus does not in fact look like a gentler, not so muscly Fabio in a white dress. But even if you cannot accomplish this much with the youngest of them given their ingrained affinity for all things visual, I do not know how much harm this will do.
For one, I doubt any of your four sixth graders will maintain the Euro-Jesus conception. Is there any chance here that we can rest in the hope that given a little time, most kids-turned-teenagers/adults will get the right idea? It seems to have worked with your kids.
And for another, how much harm are we really doing here? At least with the apple in the garden issue, I think there might be bigger fruit to fry.
Now with the racial identity of Jesus, we probably ought not be so lax. But even still, if most kids will eventually grow out of it, it is only a trade off with the kids.
That, I suppose, is my main point: if kids are grasping the biblical story well enough through children's Bibles, need we be so concerned with a detail that will likely be worked out? The premise there is of course debatable: how much are kids really getting out of children's Bibles?
That is certainly something that you as a children's non-pastor would know far more about than I. Are kids really accurately learning the Biblical story?
I suppose this is precisely the aforementioned bigger fruit...
Good points, guys! Jeff, I liked the idea of using images to promote good hermeneutics and Andrew, I appreciate that you pinpointed the most important issue in this whole discussion: whether or not children's Bibles are actually effective in communicating the story of the Bible. I also liked that you mentioned fried fruit - that's like the perfect combination of two of my favorite things in the world: fruit and frying stuff.
I definitely don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but my big concern is laying a solid biblical foundation that kids can continue to build on as they get older. If we can give them accurate information, why not?
As an aspiring children's director (or non-pastor) it always drove me crazy in college when students or professors would talk about some biblical principle and then say, "That's not what you learned in Sunday school!" It almost seemed that people expected us to have all this false knowledge we accumulated in Sunday school that needed to be stripped away in college. Although replacing false ideas with true ones is a normal part of maturing, it would be awesome if we didn't have to waste time correcting false ideas that could have easily been prevented when kids were six or seven.
For the longest time, I thought that people built the Tower of Babel because they wanted to climb up to heaven so they could be with God without having to be saved. Thankfully, I eventually had to write children's curriculum about this story and was educated in the process, but it would have been wonderful if I had known why they actually built the Tower of Babel when I was a kid. I would have had more years to think about that story and build on those ideas as opposed to misinterpreting it and not really understanding it at all. And I was capable of understanding that story at age six or seven. Kids are fact sponges - especially in elementary school. Why not fill their minds with true facts?
And I'm not sure that kids always grow out of these false ideas. If they continue to receive solid Bible instruction, chances are they will. But if they don't, they're stuck with the false ideas they picked up in Sunday school and will carry them into adulthood.
We could continue to use children's Bibles and just point out inaccuracies as they appear, but I think there's a danger in doing that. Young kids have a very difficult time thinking abstractly and discussing conflicting viewpoints would be quite confusing for them.
Having said all this, I think I'm changing my mind about all children's Bibles being bad. I have no problem seeing an artist's rendering of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, so I probably shouldn't make such a big deal about an illustration of Paul. And as far as Jesus goes, pictures do emphasize His humanity (something my brilliant mother pointed out)and not showing any pictures to kids might make it more difficult for them to grasp this idea.
My only problem is that I've yet to see a children's Bible that is accurate in its depictions of Jesus or others. And even if children's Bibles can be a helpful tool in teaching the story of the Bible, I don't think it's worth the trade off of false ideas that eventually need to be stripped away.
There's a lot of biblically sloppy material put out by Christian publishers that is at best fluff and at worst heresy. It saddens me to think of the well-meaning Christians that are misled by these books. I guess I want to be careful that I'm not allowing Christian publishers to mislead the kids I'm responsible to teach.
A good pastor wouldn't use a bad Bible translation to teach his flock. Why should it be any different for kids?
Thoughts? Opinions? Interest in writing or illustrating a children's Bible?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/
I found that hilarious, and somewhat relevant. I suppose it opens questions as to what stories should be told visually, since the section on Judges isn't exactly kid-friendly.
I didn't realize at the time I posted, but that site has some pretty inapropriate pictures, even if they are in Lego. It's nothing not in the Bible, but we don't need images for all that. Sorry if you saw any of that.
Jenny,
do you think the incarnation provides any grounds for visual depictions of Jesus?
i don't think i said anything... especially not about fried fruit...
Toph - thanks for the Brick Testament link - that was HIGH-larious!
Jeffy - good point on the incarnation. In principle, I don't think it's wrong at all to portray Jesus pictorially. If we knew what He looked like, I would have no problem with people painting Him.
I think my issue is if it's all right to completely make up a version of what Jesus looked like and paint it. On the plus side, it emphasizes that Jesus became a man, which is great. But on the negative side, it attributes things to Him (even if they are just physical characteristics) that aren't necessarily true.
I don't really have a problem with this with any other historical figure, but since it's God we're talking about, I wonder if we should be a bit more careful. I guess my question still is: if representing God as something other than what He is counts as idolatry, is it idolatrous to draw Jesus?
At this point I'm thinking that it's not idolatrous, but I don't have any firm arguments. Any thoughts?
Good response to my points. I couldn't help but think as I wrote, "I suppose if we can fix it, there isn't a good reason not to..." only then to keep writing. So I do not necessarily rescind anything I said (as that would require some humbling, and we wouldn't want any of that to happen), but I do think your response is really helpful and probably a good correction and balancing point to my thoughts. Which is exactly why I mentioned that thing about you probably having a better knowledge base than me on this one because of your being a children's non-pastor.
By the way, your suggestion at the end about writing and illustrating a children's Bible is actually exactly what I was thinking. Why not make our own, other than the obvious fact that it would take an extraordinary amount of work.
I can foresee at least two major benefits: (1) legitimate illustrations, and (2) a coherent story of salvation-history as opposed to a bunch of individual stories that amount to teaching kids moralisms. I honestly think that if we can find someone to draw (I nominate anyone in the world besides myself) we could do a heck of a job.
I am going to go call Zondervan...
Ok, this is a nerdy response...Jenny, you say you don't want to misrepresent God. My question is this. Does any language in scripture fully tell us who God is? I would say that while no God-talk in Scripture is equivocal (i.e. gives misleading information about God), all of it is still analogical (i.e. it gives us a picture that falls short of depicting the immanent Trinity). Think about Ezekiel. He strains to depict God (ch 1), as his word picture is trying to get just a semblance of what God is like in his immanent glory. It would be a terrible mistake to take the language of Ezekiel as more than analogy. Or think about John in Revelation. He goes into extensive detail telling us what Jesus is like, but we destroy the intent of the depiction if we take it literally. Similarly, we could say that depictions of Jesus are an analogy, illustrating important truths about Jesus. However (and this is really important) taking the picture literally completely annuls the point of the illustration. Maybe this is too abstract for kids, but I think it could provide a way forward. I just don't want a bunch of docetic kids in the church. We are already way too Gnostic.
Wow, great thoughts oh learned brother! They were very helpful to me and I think your analogy example is apt. APT!!!
I really like the idea of showing the picture of Jesus to kids and explaining what's accurate and what we don't know. I think that if they were properly trained, most kids would be able to grasp the important stuff (Jesus was human and male) and also understand that we don't know much more about what He looked like. Hopefully they would then be able to look at every picture of Jesus this way and it would become an affirmation of the incarnation.
I'm not sure that removing the picture of Jesus would encourage Gnosticism, simply because there are lots of historical figures I haven't seen pictures of, but have no problem believing were actual men and women. (Although, if we did become Gnostic, then we could be called Gnostic Community Church and you could have more resources for your next paper!) However, I do think it's vital that kids understand that Jesus is both human and divine and pictures can probably help them grasp that idea.
All right. I think I'm almost over my iconoclastic spree.
Hey, Andrew Faris. I would totally be up for writing a children's Bible with you and anyone else who was interested. I've actually thought about that idea for a while and I really think we could do most of the stories of the Bible in a kid-friendly way (I mean, Veggietales took on David and Bathsheba) and also, like you said, tell the story of salvation history through the whole thing. It would be super hard, but super fun. I'm definitely game.
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