Within the Emerging church movement (and to a lesser degree outside of it) you will often hear the word “narrative” being thrown around. Most Christians tend to get a bit uncomfortable when you refer to the Bible as a “story.” When they hear the word they automatically think of it in the negative sense, as in children’s 
story, fable, or myth. This is due in part to the effective tactic of agnostic skeptics who refer to the Bible as a “fairy tale for adults.” However, it is also due to our own people teaching the Bible as a collection of unrelated stories about character qualities and mysterious divine intervention. When our children are young we teach them about “Bible characters” using flannel-graphs, crafts, and cartoon images. Instead of using powerful images like Caravaggio’s David and Goliath (see here and here), we resort to colorful caricatures, dramatic emphasis, or, worse yet, fruits and vegetables, to tell the story. Is it any wonder that such a large percentage of children raised in the modern church abandon their “faith” when confronted with the reality of the “real world?” What good does a flannel-graph story do when you are constantly being accosted by professors, co-workers, and friends who are intent on undermining your “Sunday-school religion?”
In his short but powerful indictment of secularism, Harry Blamires writes:
We cannot make sense of adult life with the mental equipment of the child. We cannot afford to carry into adult life a Christian consciousness so under-nourished and anaemic that we slide into accepting faddish convenience recipes for worldly well-being as our daily diet. The evidence is that when the time comes for getting to grips with the Christian faith as adults and not as children, many of our contemporaries abandon their faith. They were early spoon-fed on the milk of the word, but in adulthood they discard the nourishment as babyish, and assume that there is no more to be said. Meanwhile, professing believers, men and women who perhaps make great steps forward in other spheres of life, all too often succumb to the epidemic of anorexia religiosa which destroys all appetite for progress in Christian understanding and commitment.[1]
While Blamires is right on the money in his assessment of the child/adult dualism that threatens real Christianity, he stresses the grown-up side of the Gospel without ever questioning how the Church is teaching the Bible to its youngest members. If we continue to teach our children the Bible as nothing more than a series of stories, when do we expect that they will make the transition from milk to meat? Just as real milk is necessary for a baby to grow, real Bible is necessary for the child. But if, as adults, we continue to forsake the meat of the Bible in favor of the milk, we will never grow as God intended us to. Teaching the stories of the Bible is one thing, but teaching the stories of the Bible in a silly way does nothing to advance a love for and understanding of the Bible in children. Why do we allow the Bible to be taught in this way, yet would never entertain the notion of teaching American or European history like this?
When Christians teach the Bible, they need to constantly have the “big picture” in their minds. The story of the Bible (and it is a story, or narrative if you so prefer) is a comprehensive explanation for everything that we experience in the world. In this sense, the Bible is the worldview for the Christian. The Bible provides answers to the major worldview questions that have plagued philosophers since the beginning: why, who, what, where, how, and when. These ultimate interrogatives must be answered by any worldview that claims to have the answer to the “meaning of life.” And a worldview must “hang together” by being consistent within itself. We naturally know this about any endeavor that we undertake in life. If a factory-worker spent his whole life installing transistors on a circuit-board without ever once wondering about what his transistors are being used for, we would think him a little strange if we met him at a cocktail party.
“Hi, Bob, what do you do for a living?”
“I install transistors on circuit boards at the factory on Maple Street.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. What does your factory make?”
“I don’t know. I never bothered asking. I just install transistors for eight hours and go home.”
“Oh, OK. See you later Bob.”
If, after discussing the factory on Maple with other party guests, we discover that Bob is actually contributing his transistor-filled circuit boards to heat-seeking missiles for a terrorist country, would this change Bob’s view of his occupation? Does the “story” of Bob’s occupation line up with his generally pacifistic approach to life? Could Bob reconcile these two conflicting “facts” in his life without quitting his job, or letting go of his pacifism? This is where our worldviews—our ultimate stories about reality—really matter.
The story of the Bible is told quite succinctly in the first five books, ending with Joshua leading the covenant people into the “promised land.” Zoom out a bit on the entire Bible and we now see Jesus, the new Joshua, leading His covenant people into the “promised land,” the heavenly Zion, the city that Abraham was looking for “whose architect and builder was God” (Hebrews 11:8-10). The Bible is filled with repetitive patterns and types that the smaller stories (the Sunday-school ones) fit into. If we neglect to teach our children the grand narrative of the Bible—God bringing His people into the promised land—there is nothing that the smaller stories can contribute other than interesting miraculous events that make us feel good. Without the overarching story of the Bible, the Sunday-school faith of flannel-graphs and character qualities will never stand a chance against the humanistic, all-encompassing worldview of the secularist.
Endnotes:- Harry Blamires, Recovering the Christian Mind (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1988), 9. [↩]
Eric earned his Bachelor's Degree in Communications from Penn State University and served in the US Navy as an Aviation Electronics Technician. A Northerner by birth, Eric has finally come to terms with the virtues of sweet tea, yet still laments the tragic lack of understanding of what real pretzels are outside of central Pennsylvania.
Is how you tell a story also important? Kierkegaard tells a story, whether true or imaginary, I don't know, but it impacted me as an adult, & I can only imagine how it would forever change a child's perception. Basically, it goes as follows:
A father shows his child some pictures of great heroes from history in various dignified poses, & the child asks who they are & what does the picture mean. The father explains who they were & what they did to be such great men, but in the stack, he places a picture of the crucifixion. When the the child sees it, he is horrified & asks what did he do, why is he hanging like that? The father tells his child that He was the greatest hero of them all, but he was treated as if he worst of all.
There is more to it. I don't tell it very well, but you may get the point if you have a sufficiently strong imagination. There is a shock value to this approach, but is it too shocking? If it was autobiographical, it certainly made a lasting impression on Kierkegaard, but it could render some children numb.
Whatever approach one takes or however dramatic one may be, it is essential to teach with passion: by example & integrity. If you teach them as you say, it shows your passion in one sense, but if you model what you teach, then you show your passion in a deeper & truer sense, & kids see through an academic or historical interest in the truth compared with an actual interest in living the truth. Even if a child learns the truth or sees past the hypocrisy, if he is anything like me, he will still find it hard to move beyond the intellectual acknowledgment & defense of the truth to actually proving to be a disciple in practice. It is easy to sell all intellectually, but learning to sell all actually or in actual practice is much harder. A Christian parent needs to model a sold out life for Jesus, needs to disciple his own kids.
Here are the six listed by the author in Hebrews 6:1-2, Repentance, Faith, Baptisms, Laying on of Hands, Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgement. I would dare say, most Christians don't know these doctrines of our Christian faith because they have never been taught as the basic foundation to our faith. Sadly, as Christians and especially as young Christians, we are left without answers when challenge by secular academics. We need to teach and especially teach our children. THANKS FOR YOUR ARTICLE!__
Fundamental doctrines which should be taught to every born again Christian and especially to children beginning at an early age. These Basic Doctrines, as I refer to them, are as foundational to our spiritual life and growth as reading, writing and arithmetic are foundational to every thing we know and do in our secular life. And as these are taught and all other disciplines of art, science and medicine are build upon, so should these six basic or elementary doctrines be taught early in life and to every newly born again believer. A large percentage of life's questions can be answered within the scope of these six doctrines and all other issues of spiritual growth are built upon these basics to the point that our spiritual maturity will never be recognized individually or corporately in the church until we have a grasp of these Basic Doctrines.
WELL WRITTEN! Hebrews 5:12 For though you should in fact be teachers by this time, you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances. You have gone back to needing milk, not solid food. 5:13 For everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced in the message of righteousness, because he is an infant. 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, whose perceptions are trained by practice to discern both good and evil.__The author of Hebrews goes on to lay out what I believe to be six Elementary or Basic Doctrines.
Excellent article Eric!
"When Christians teach the Bible, they need to constantly have the “big picture” in their minds. The story of the Bible (and it is a story, or narrative if you so prefer) is a comprehensive explanation for everything that we experience in the world. In this sense, the Bible is the worldview for the Christian. The Bible provides answers to the major worldview questions that have plagued philosophers since the beginning: why, who, what, where, how, and when."
Words that can be used to silence an atheist.