BAN CUTESIFYING

We need to stop cutesifying Bible stories and teach our kids the all-empowering sovereignty of God and how that sovereignty is relevant to their lives.  (Yes, I know that cutesifying isn't a word, but you get what I'm saying.)

Recently I taught a children's church lesson about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. According to the teacher's guide, the lesson went something like this -

The Israelites lived in Egypt a very long time and wanted to move to a better land so Moses led them on a journey to another place. They traveled many miles across the desert and were often tired and thirsty but God took care of them. Can you imagine how hard that would be? What would you take with you if you were on a long trip?

Wait a minute! That version has a disconnect with my Bible. My Bible says Moses had a difficult time getting the people out of Egypt and even then, they weren't all that happy about the journey. Trekking through the desert was tiring and thirst-producing. They often forgot the part about trusting God, a God who promised to provide for them.

Unfortunately, this is the way a lot of curriculum is written these days. Hit the uptimes, and forget the downtimes. We don't want to scare the kids. (I had a dad protesting when we taught his daughter about Paul and Silas. His child was scared of the dark and obviously, there weren't lights in that prison.)

After teaching watered-down, pablumized five-minute versions of Bible events, we spend the next 20 minutes having the kids color a picture of cherubic-looking Bible characters.. If the kids do a good job coloring, they get to sprinkle glitter glue on their pictures (and on the floor, table and the little kid across the table).

By the time the kids are in middle school, they're ready to move on from the cutesified Sunday school stories/crafts/snacks - and on to something more grown up like their next body piercing, video game or upgraded cell phone. That Bible stuff was fun when they were kids, but they're past that now.

No, I'm not advocating that we teach four-year-olds about Noah's drunken nakedness or Dinah's ill fated trip into Shechem.

But let's be honest. The events of the Exodus show the love of God for His people and His willingness to provide for them. The Exodus also shows the hardened hearts of people in response to God. These were real people and this was real life. We can learn a lot from the people of the past.

Kids need to understand that life isn't easy, because you know something? Life isn't easy. Our goal as parents and teachers should be preparing them for those uneasy times because they come with more regularity than anyone desires.

Yes, there's a place for glitter and coloring pages and toothpick arks, but kids do not develop a biblical-centric view of life based on a weekly hour of watered-down Bible stories and paste-the-cotton-on-David's sheep coloring pages.

They need to be taught to think and to understand that studying the Bible is more than a way to fill up a Sunday-morning hour. The Bible is the guidebook for the way we relate to our families, choose a career, think about art, absorb what we read, choose heroes and make the dozens of decisions that affect us every hour of every day.

Yes, we can have fun when teaching the kids God's Word, but the Bible is also serious instruction about the serious business of our lives.

Let's put a ban on cutesifying the Bible and wake up to teaching our kids what God actually has to say to us.