The pandemic has changed much of our lives and challenged us in many ways. I have a four year old and a two year old. I began to think about my four year old and how I can teach him about God. Honestly, I must reveal I was reluctant when he was younger. I did not know how to teach such complex ideas and I didn’t want to scare him either. I certainly didn’t trust anyone else to do it either- yes, this probably says much about who I am. I’m not paranoid but I’m a do-it-yourselfer for sure.
I remember finding a “My First Bible” and thinking I’ll read this to him. He was around 3 years old at the time and loved stories. It started out nice enough with God creating the world and Adam and Eve. Then it takes a nose dive, “They did something God told them not to do. Now God is punishing them. They must go away from their nice home…The angels won’t let them go back….” Did I mention that I’m a therapist, trained as a psychologist? I was horrified!
Fortunately, I was reading through it on my own and hadn’t started reading it with my son. The next page was even worse with Cain killing Abel, concepts I did not want my son exposed to yet. I imagined us reading this story and my son asking if I’d kick him out of our house.
I put the bible away and started thinking, for the first time, how I would introduce God to my children. I thought it would flow naturally from me, I wanted to be a living Gospel to my children. And, honestly, I still do but I became convinced that this was not working by the time the pandemic hit.
At a loss, I began googling online children’s church. There was far less out there than I had anticipated. After combing through a lot videos and websites I was really disappointed. I found one series by a church that looked promising. As I was reviewing it on my phone, my children came over and crawled into my lap. I wanted to preview it first but they were really interested so I let them watch.
I was mostly concerned about how interesting it would be for them and it started out well enough. It was focused around trusting in God to overcome your fear- this was exactly what I was looking for because my oldest had developed a significant fear of monsters. This would be a great start…trust God so you aren’t afraid of the dark!
As the video progressed we got to Daniel and the Lion’s Den. It started by talking again about God’s punishment of the Isrealites and moved to the story of Daniel. I wasn’t thrilled, concerned about their perception of God but I was still open. It went pretty well until Daniel’s accusers were thrown into the den and “gobbled up” by lions. Ugghh! I realized at that point that the bible was not suitable for children—my evangelical roots were shaken to the core but I was used to challenging my belief systems at this point and knew my faith in God could sustain this tremor.
But along with this revelation came a thought- what is the value of teaching a bunch of stories to my children if what I really wanted was for them to have a relationship with God. It also made me look at my motivation for that particular lesson. I wanted God to solve a problem I was having with my children but all that would have done was make God a magic formula or talisman against monsters. Now I really needed to step back and think and pray about what I really wanted for my kids.
Being a trained psychologist I decided that I needed to refresh myself on what 2 and 4 year old life was like. What are they capable of? What are their life’s challenges and developmental stages? So now I’m prayerfully considering what their introduction to God would look like by starting to understand them better- what do they need rather than what did I want them to have? And I’m hoping to hear from you and make this a collaborative effort.
Raising Gentle Faith 