We Love the Kid’s Stories but Can We Live With Grown-up Endings?
One of the first books we read to our daughter was a little children’s Bible. It was brightly illustrated and had thick board pages she could turn. It was (and is) great. As she “graduated” to bigger books, we read to her from a different children’s Bible that her grandpa gave her. She loves it. She will sit and look at the pages on her own and will frequently request (well, maybe demand), “read Bible”. These little books have been a nice way to spend time together as a family and share the basics of a few of the chapters out of God’s great story of redemption. So please do not read what I am about to write as a slam on all children’s Bibles. Please do not think that I see no use for them or that I will be discarding our copy any time soon. But I would like to share a thought I had about an aspect that is common to many of the stories. That is, they end earlier than they do in the Bible.
A Few Examples
The picture Bible we read to my daughter is a fairly popular version published by one of the larger Christian publishers. I won’t cite the book because the purpose is not to be critical of a specific book. The comments I have are very broad and directed at story Bibles in general. I have not done a comprehensive survey on children’s Bibles but from what I remember growing up and from what I have seen among the 3 or versions we have owned the phenomena of moving the ending of stories up is fairly consistent. Take, for example, Noah and the flood one of the favorite all-time kid’s stories. Our Bible tells it in four installments beginning with ‘God said he would make it rain until there was water everywhere! Noah believed God’ and ending with ‘Then Noah thanked God for keeping [his family] safe’. This is obviously a magnificent Old Testament story. It is, of course, the story of salvation and it is marvelous. But the tale did not exactly end there. Noah did thank God by planting a vineyard. He then made wine and got really, really drunk. Then all kinds of shenanigans ensued.
But Noah’s story is not alone in its abrupt termination. Remember, Abraham and Sarah (or Abram and Sarai). The story begins ‘Abraham and Sarah were sad. They didn’t have any children.’ Two more sentences tell how God promised a son and delivered on the promise by giving them Isaac. The story concludes ‘Abraham and Sarah were very happy’. Great story. Patience in Lord, God’s provision, God doing the impossible. All those things are right there in five sentences. Lessons to teach your child and, when they are older, discuss with them. But the truth is the story did not really end up like that, did it? Once Sarah had Isaac she was really mad about Abraham’s other son who was born of the servant Hagar. Never mind that it was Sarah’s plan to have him father the child. Sarah then demands that Abraham send Hagar and the young boy off into the desert to die. He does what she says. God promises to protect the woman and her young son.
If another story rivals Noah’s ark for all-time favorite it would be David and Goliath. No children’s story Bible is without it. Ours is no exception. The formidable giant is introduced as a clear enemy of God and soon the story ends with a triumphant ‘the stone hit Goliath between the eyes and killed him!’. Amen. Again, God does the impossible and he involves humans in the great drama. One of the many foreshadows of how God’s great work through Christ would take place. But David did not just cheer and high-five King Saul to celebrate the victory. He used Goliath’s own sword to cut off the giant’s head. Then David carried the head back to his tent. Wow, what a great opportunity for a color illustration missed.
Moving on through the Bible, we get to Jonah. That famous “reluctant missionary”, as some have called him. This story is also great. God wants Jonah in Nineveh. Jonah wants otherwise and runs off on a ship in the other direction. Of course you know what happens next. Jonah gets tossed into the sea, swallowed by a whale and spit out onto dry land. In our book the story ends with ‘Then Jonah went where God told him to go’. Our smaller story Bible actually took us with Jonah to Nineveh and ended with ‘the people of Nineveh obeyed God’. But either way, Jonah’s story isn’t finished. No, Jonah, our hero, sulks out of the city mad at God that He would actually spare the people of Nineveh. He sits under a large, fast-growing tree (weed?) for shade. God kills the tree and Jonah is left sulking and angry in the hot sun. Seriously.
So What?
At this point you might say ‘so what?’. Do we have to give all the gory details to a two-year-old? Go ahead, throw in the story of Elisha and the bears that ate the kids—complete with pictures, that would be great before bedtime. Of course, as I said earlier, this is not my point. The story Bibles are good. But I wonder how many adults (for example, me) still really prefer these versions of the stories. I wonder how many folks are very content to remember and reflect on these stories with their neat-and-tidy fairy tale endings and do not give any thought to messiness of the real endings. I would guess many.
I think it is comforting for us to stay in that little picture Bible. Where heroes are unstained by shortcomings or faults and a happy ending means no unanswered questions and no loose ends. It makes life easier. But then again, it doesn’t tell the truth about life. We are living in a fallen, broken world. Sin has corrupted every aspect of creation. That is reality. Another reality is the God is redeeming and will redeem every aspect of creation through Jesus Christ. But it is slow and seldom, if ever, neat and tidy.
Noah was labeled as the only righteous man on earth in his time. He loved God. God saw fit to punish the world for its sin and saw fit to carry Noah and family safely through the punishment. To show his gratefulness, Noah sinned foolishly. God chose Abraham as the person through whom He would bless the world. He told Abraham this. Abraham believed God to the point of packing up his life moving to an unknown world. But Abraham still did stupid things. He still fell into sin. Not just your garden-variety sin that evangelicals might confess to their small groups. No. We’re talking about adultery and attempted murder. As long as we have these saints (I sincerely mean saints. There is NO sarcasm here) as obeying God, reaping the blessings, and keeping on the right track we are comforted. We can aspire to be like them and point our kids that way. But when we see that these people struggled knee-deep in sin, things get messy.
What about David? As long as he is that shy, good-looking teenager who triumphs in spite of his youth, he is a safe role-model. But when we see that he is really a warrior, bent on finishing the battle with Goliath so that there is no doubt that the victory belongs to God, then what? When we have to deal with the fact that God is so deadly serious about His enemies that He would sanction this barbaric act, things get messy.
As long as Jonah is simply “reluctant” but really comes through for the team in the end, who wouldn’t want to tout him as a hero? It is perfect. Someone is waffling on being obedient to God in their life—look at Jonah. What, you won’t trust God to use you to advance the kingdom? Remember Jonah. But then when we see that even in the success of God’s work, Jonah wasn’t happy, we are confused. When we see that God used Jonah to do His work and Jonah complained that he was a part of the whole deal, it is hard to process. In other words, things get messy.
This is a very real part of God’s story. Things are messy. As I have written, God has ordained to use humans in taking the message of Jesus into the world. Because He works with, in, and through fallen, broken people, things are not always clean and neat. We need to realize this. More than that, I believe we need to embrace it. I freely admit that there are many days that I am content to stick with the picture Bible stories and pretend that is the whole story. But that just won’t do. As we walk through our own crooked and perverse generations and try to live among them as lights in the world, we need to be prepared for messiness. When the reality of our sin or the sin of other saints comes crashing down on us like a nine-foot giant, we need to be grounded in reality—in the reality of God’s word. We need to see that, unfortunately, sin will always be around in humans, even believers. We need to see that God calls us to do the radical, the impossible and He calls us to do things completely for Him. Nothing held back. We need to know that being involved in God’s work does not always equal a peachy-keen situation, from a human standpoint. But, more than these things, we need to remember that in spite of the messiness, we know how the story really ends. We know God that will prevail. We know that He didn’t choose to work through Abraham, Sarah, Noah, David, and Jonah by accident. He chose them and His plan worked even in all the messiness.
So, even though I am sometimes tempted to stop at the children’s endings with my daughter, I will not. Even though my human nature prefers a story-book with all questions answered and all issues resolved, I will keep reading. I will face the messiness and know that all the unanswered questions and all the unresolved issues knowing that all these things have actually been answered and resolved in Jesus. I will draw confidence in the fact that God has always been in the business of working in a messy world with messy people. He will continue to do that and no one will thwart His plan. I will read the grown-up endings.
A Few Examples
The picture Bible we read to my daughter is a fairly popular version published by one of the larger Christian publishers. I won’t cite the book because the purpose is not to be critical of a specific book. The comments I have are very broad and directed at story Bibles in general. I have not done a comprehensive survey on children’s Bibles but from what I remember growing up and from what I have seen among the 3 or versions we have owned the phenomena of moving the ending of stories up is fairly consistent. Take, for example, Noah and the flood one of the favorite all-time kid’s stories. Our Bible tells it in four installments beginning with ‘God said he would make it rain until there was water everywhere! Noah believed God’ and ending with ‘Then Noah thanked God for keeping [his family] safe’. This is obviously a magnificent Old Testament story. It is, of course, the story of salvation and it is marvelous. But the tale did not exactly end there. Noah did thank God by planting a vineyard. He then made wine and got really, really drunk. Then all kinds of shenanigans ensued.
But Noah’s story is not alone in its abrupt termination. Remember, Abraham and Sarah (or Abram and Sarai). The story begins ‘Abraham and Sarah were sad. They didn’t have any children.’ Two more sentences tell how God promised a son and delivered on the promise by giving them Isaac. The story concludes ‘Abraham and Sarah were very happy’. Great story. Patience in Lord, God’s provision, God doing the impossible. All those things are right there in five sentences. Lessons to teach your child and, when they are older, discuss with them. But the truth is the story did not really end up like that, did it? Once Sarah had Isaac she was really mad about Abraham’s other son who was born of the servant Hagar. Never mind that it was Sarah’s plan to have him father the child. Sarah then demands that Abraham send Hagar and the young boy off into the desert to die. He does what she says. God promises to protect the woman and her young son.
If another story rivals Noah’s ark for all-time favorite it would be David and Goliath. No children’s story Bible is without it. Ours is no exception. The formidable giant is introduced as a clear enemy of God and soon the story ends with a triumphant ‘the stone hit Goliath between the eyes and killed him!’. Amen. Again, God does the impossible and he involves humans in the great drama. One of the many foreshadows of how God’s great work through Christ would take place. But David did not just cheer and high-five King Saul to celebrate the victory. He used Goliath’s own sword to cut off the giant’s head. Then David carried the head back to his tent. Wow, what a great opportunity for a color illustration missed.
Moving on through the Bible, we get to Jonah. That famous “reluctant missionary”, as some have called him. This story is also great. God wants Jonah in Nineveh. Jonah wants otherwise and runs off on a ship in the other direction. Of course you know what happens next. Jonah gets tossed into the sea, swallowed by a whale and spit out onto dry land. In our book the story ends with ‘Then Jonah went where God told him to go’. Our smaller story Bible actually took us with Jonah to Nineveh and ended with ‘the people of Nineveh obeyed God’. But either way, Jonah’s story isn’t finished. No, Jonah, our hero, sulks out of the city mad at God that He would actually spare the people of Nineveh. He sits under a large, fast-growing tree (weed?) for shade. God kills the tree and Jonah is left sulking and angry in the hot sun. Seriously.
So What?
At this point you might say ‘so what?’. Do we have to give all the gory details to a two-year-old? Go ahead, throw in the story of Elisha and the bears that ate the kids—complete with pictures, that would be great before bedtime. Of course, as I said earlier, this is not my point. The story Bibles are good. But I wonder how many adults (for example, me) still really prefer these versions of the stories. I wonder how many folks are very content to remember and reflect on these stories with their neat-and-tidy fairy tale endings and do not give any thought to messiness of the real endings. I would guess many.
I think it is comforting for us to stay in that little picture Bible. Where heroes are unstained by shortcomings or faults and a happy ending means no unanswered questions and no loose ends. It makes life easier. But then again, it doesn’t tell the truth about life. We are living in a fallen, broken world. Sin has corrupted every aspect of creation. That is reality. Another reality is the God is redeeming and will redeem every aspect of creation through Jesus Christ. But it is slow and seldom, if ever, neat and tidy.
Noah was labeled as the only righteous man on earth in his time. He loved God. God saw fit to punish the world for its sin and saw fit to carry Noah and family safely through the punishment. To show his gratefulness, Noah sinned foolishly. God chose Abraham as the person through whom He would bless the world. He told Abraham this. Abraham believed God to the point of packing up his life moving to an unknown world. But Abraham still did stupid things. He still fell into sin. Not just your garden-variety sin that evangelicals might confess to their small groups. No. We’re talking about adultery and attempted murder. As long as we have these saints (I sincerely mean saints. There is NO sarcasm here) as obeying God, reaping the blessings, and keeping on the right track we are comforted. We can aspire to be like them and point our kids that way. But when we see that these people struggled knee-deep in sin, things get messy.
What about David? As long as he is that shy, good-looking teenager who triumphs in spite of his youth, he is a safe role-model. But when we see that he is really a warrior, bent on finishing the battle with Goliath so that there is no doubt that the victory belongs to God, then what? When we have to deal with the fact that God is so deadly serious about His enemies that He would sanction this barbaric act, things get messy.
As long as Jonah is simply “reluctant” but really comes through for the team in the end, who wouldn’t want to tout him as a hero? It is perfect. Someone is waffling on being obedient to God in their life—look at Jonah. What, you won’t trust God to use you to advance the kingdom? Remember Jonah. But then when we see that even in the success of God’s work, Jonah wasn’t happy, we are confused. When we see that God used Jonah to do His work and Jonah complained that he was a part of the whole deal, it is hard to process. In other words, things get messy.
This is a very real part of God’s story. Things are messy. As I have written, God has ordained to use humans in taking the message of Jesus into the world. Because He works with, in, and through fallen, broken people, things are not always clean and neat. We need to realize this. More than that, I believe we need to embrace it. I freely admit that there are many days that I am content to stick with the picture Bible stories and pretend that is the whole story. But that just won’t do. As we walk through our own crooked and perverse generations and try to live among them as lights in the world, we need to be prepared for messiness. When the reality of our sin or the sin of other saints comes crashing down on us like a nine-foot giant, we need to be grounded in reality—in the reality of God’s word. We need to see that, unfortunately, sin will always be around in humans, even believers. We need to see that God calls us to do the radical, the impossible and He calls us to do things completely for Him. Nothing held back. We need to know that being involved in God’s work does not always equal a peachy-keen situation, from a human standpoint. But, more than these things, we need to remember that in spite of the messiness, we know how the story really ends. We know God that will prevail. We know that He didn’t choose to work through Abraham, Sarah, Noah, David, and Jonah by accident. He chose them and His plan worked even in all the messiness.
So, even though I am sometimes tempted to stop at the children’s endings with my daughter, I will not. Even though my human nature prefers a story-book with all questions answered and all issues resolved, I will keep reading. I will face the messiness and know that all the unanswered questions and all the unresolved issues knowing that all these things have actually been answered and resolved in Jesus. I will draw confidence in the fact that God has always been in the business of working in a messy world with messy people. He will continue to do that and no one will thwart His plan. I will read the grown-up endings.
posted by BKC | 4:44 AM
2 Comments:
If we stop at the children's story version (and forget Christ sees the larger, full encompassing, ugly picture...and even chose to first love us in that mess of a scene) the brilliance, majesty, and grace of the cross are rather dull. Thanks for the good words. Keep posting, you're just getting interesting.
Very interesting thought. I for one now see the need for the grown-up versions so that I understand that things in my life will not always be neat and tidy. When things get tight or stressful in our lives we tend to look back on the perfect ending stories and ask where is my perfect ending. It is probably around the next corner because God never promised us a perfect life here on earth. God will use our sin and life circumstances to mold us to do his work if we totally give our lives over to him. Just as the Saints written about in these stories.
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