Fact or Fiction?

One of my biggest pet peeves about Christian education today is that we're fictionalizing the Word of God. And then we wonder why people who've grown up in our ministries aren't sure if the Bible is completely true or not. (Barna cites study after study where even churched Christians don't accept that all of the Bible is true.) I think it's time we step back to see if perhaps we're reaping things we've sown into kids' worldviews.

This Sunday, one of the 2-year-olds in my class brought me a book to read. He had several to choose from: Disney books, Sesame Street books, etc. The one he brought me was on Jonah. The only thing was that it was the "Alice in Bibleland storybooks series." No kidding! It exists! Alice (a fictional character) learns about real-life people that God interacted with. How is this 2-year-old supposed to know that Alice is fictional and Jonah isn't?

Add to that the lingo we use related to the Bible. We tell kids Bible "stories." We ask them which "character" in the Bible they most relate to. People, these aren't characters...they are real people who lived in history and had real things happen to them! We would never say "I'm going to tell you the story of Winston Churchill. He's an important character in the story of World War II." No! We'd say "Winston Churchill was an important man who lived during World War II." What happened to him was real--not a story like Big Bird going to a farm and learning about manners.

What's to be done? I can tell you that from a publishing perspective, we're trying to clean up the way we refer to these real people and real historical accounts. But what else can be done? I remember long ago that a children's minister told me she wouldn't allow all the cartoon characters in her facility because it blurred the lines between fact and fiction. In my class, I've stopped calling it "storytime" and the "story rug," and instead call it "Bible time" and the "Bible time rug." Little things, but I think they may add up to cementing truth for our little ones.

What do you think? What can we do to help our children see that the Word of God is not a bunch of characters in stories...but it's the amazing retelling of God's movement with real people in real time--just like with us?

Comments

[Henry Zonio]

I hear what you are saying, and I agree that we do need to be careful not to over fictionalize the Bible. I think, though, that we can go overboard in the opposite direction and overly historicize the Bible to the point where it is sterile and powerless. In a sense, the Bible is both story and history. It tells the real story of God's desire to redeem all of creation and that story continues to be written today.

Instead of removing words like "story" and "character" maybe we should give more depth and meaning to those words. We tell a story with our lives and we should be striving for God to be the author of that story where we are one of the heroic characters working alongside the Holy Spirit. We can tell real stories from the Bible with real characters. I think if we remove the vocabulary of story from the Bible and what God is doing, we run the risk of taking the adventure and power out of it.

What it takes for that to happen, though, is more intentionality in how we present the Bible and being intentional with how we define story and characters. That could just be the creative in me, but I think we lose something when we simply replace "story" with "history" and "character" with "real person."

[myrtille]

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[amy dolan]

i agree - especially when it comes to storytelling for preschool children and younger. their brains aren't yet able to distinguish between stories that are true and not-true. when we mix in fictional characters with historical characters, i think we confuse the story for them.

but - there is obviously something special about storytelling, and characters, and imagination for young children. i wonder what would happen if we used our creative storytelling energy to bring the bible to life so that children were caught up in the wonder and beauty of the bible stories in place of focusing so much of our energy on creating fictional characters who appear far more interesting than the bible characters.

[Matt Markins]

You hit the nail on the head. As you stated, it's no wonder only 5% of Church goers have a 'Christian worldview.' Well stated.

[Cadu]

Henry, I think the main point here is not exactly how we present, but how the kids see and understand the things we present. What Christine said is a serious issue. If you talk about real and fictional things to a child at the same time, they get associated together in their memory.
One of the crucial things in the learning process is the previous knowledge the child has. What do they see and know every day? Tv, movies, fictional stories. We must not associate the word of God with this kind of fiction, because the word of God is not fictional, it is REAL and ALIVE!
For this reason I totally agree with you Christine: we must make it very clear to our kids that the people in the Bible are real, and that the same God that was there with them is here with us now.

[Tonya]

I am children's ministry leader and a huge fan of history in general. To help cement the idea of this being real-life, I use what the students would use in history class; timeline (relative, not exact dates) that includes non-biblical events, map, pictures of artifacts. No lesson ever stands alone, but we are always refering back to "remember when", and how what happened then influenced what we are studying now. I never had a perspective of "when" anything happened, or why, until we studied history as a family, chronologically, and I can't imagine ever studying the Bible out of historical context again.

[Larry Shallenberger]

I feel the tension between Christine's post and Henry's remark.

In Chris' corner-- the narrative is and must be presented as history. However, the limitation is that kids might view the Bible as factual but with the same detachment that have when they look at the our country's early history-- interesting, but it's not "mine."

Biblical history is different because we see the past and the future (limited through prophesy). We see a design in this history (a story arc) and we discover that we are a part of it.

We need a new word to capture the unique type of history that we are living in.

[Chris Yount Jones]

It might help if I give a few examples of things I see in my corner. When I'm editing a lesson that's going to be taught to children, instead of saying, "Today in our Bible story, we learned..." why not just say "Today in the Bible, we learned..." Instead of asking, "Which character did you like best in today's Bible story?" why not ask, "Which person did you like best in the Bible today?" It's nuances, but I believe it makes a difference in establishing fact from fiction.

[Henry Zonio]

I completely agree that we need to make sure that children need to see the Bible as Truth and not as fiction. And yes we need to be careful in the vocabulary we use.

We need to capitalize on the imagination of children, though, to capture that sense of wonder and involvement in the Story of God as revealed by his Word. Do we ban Veggie Tales renditions of Bible Stories or similar things like that?

I guess that's where the living part of the Story needs to be in place as well. We need to be telling AND living the Story for each generation.

I don't disagree that we need to be careful to fictionalize the Bible, but I think that it needs to be more than just a change in semantics. It needs to be a change in praxis as well.

Whomever says that CM is easy needs to be beaten (with foam noodles, of course) :)

[V Fulmizi]

The points brought up here are all important. I've spent many years in public school and kids just confuse things no matter HOW hard you try to be a perfect wordsmith--But when doing any curriculum writing that is bible related it is important to write as clearly as possible--thank God the kids have the Holy Spirit just like us adults---I think He can help them work it out!