Are catalysmic natural disasters appropriate for the children’s choir?
The Bible is not for kids. At least much of it isn’t. The eroticism of Song of Songs is not fitting content for bed time devotions. Nor are the scenes of murder, rape and dismemberment in Judges or the shocking descriptions of starvation and cannibalism that one finds in Lamentations.
Fortunately there are a range of children’s Bibles on the market which have edited the R-rated material out and reduced the Bible to something like an innocuous collection of Jewish Aesops fables.
But how appropriate are some of those stories? Or do they further the problem by distorting the actual shocking content of some of the most familiar Bible stories?
Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is an obvious target with its sanitized retelling of a genocidal attack in which Jericho’s loss of the battle becomes about as threatening as losing a snowball fight to your neighbor.
However, my candidate for the most disturbing of all the Jewish Aesops fables is the retold story of Noah and the Ark. Those retellings in children’s Bibles and Sunday school have been so successful that the retold story has become a part of our popular consciousness.
For example, go into a store that specializes in children’s furniture and you can easily outfit an entire room in child-friendly Noah’s ark decor from cartoon animal wallpaper and comforter to an ark shaped lamp. And don’t forget “Noah’s Ark Waterpark” at Wisconsin Dells which bills itself as America’s largest waterpark. And of course there are Noah’s ark toys, including plush animals, puzzles and models. One can hardly imagine how lucrative it would be to hold the sacred copyright to Noah’s ark themed merchandise.
And let us not forget the endless flannelgraph images, songs and even complete musicals. Consider the following excerpt from the children’s musical “100% Chance of Rain”:
The singing is rather painful, but if you can endure perhaps you will find yourself in the grip of the lyrical content. The children sing jovially about the rising water line as sheets of the wet stuff pour down, and all the while seemingly oblivious to the carnage and unimaginable suffering at the heart of the story.
Needless to say to a true outsider who hears the actual story of Noah’s ark for the first time, this whole picture would look positively grotesque. A story about a massive flood in which millions of people, livestock and wild animals were drowned repackaged for a children’s audience? How horrible would it be to drown? I don’t know but I’ve seen video of people being water boarded and they sure didn’t seem to be enjoying it. So when, and how, did this become appropriate thematic content for a children’s musical, a water park, a toddler’s bedroom?
If you cannot tell a Bible story to your child without hiding the true horror of it, should you be telling the story at all?
Tags: Bible, children's Bible, flood, Noah's ark, Sunday school
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[...] Google Blog Bible Study Lessons for Kids]: Are catalysmic natural disasters appropriate for the children's choir? [...]
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[...] Joel Willits blogged about the Noachide laws. Steve Wiggins blogged about attributing hurricanes to deities (which many had been discussing due to Bachmann’s quip). Richard Anderson discussed Jesus not walking on the sea. Randall Rauser asked whether songs about cataclysms are appropriate for a children’s choir. [...]
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[...] week, Randal Rauser published a post entitled, “Are cataclysmic natural disasters appropriate for the children’s choir?” in which he questioned the wisdom of entertaining children with macabre Bible stories [...]
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Noahs Ark Plush Set…
[...] pent in the garden! All of this to fulfill some divine plan. Truly, God is liter [...]…
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davidstarlingm says:
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 8:39pm
I don’t know exactly why, but I can’t say that I was ever particularly bothered by the flood account. Not because it was sanitized — it wasn’t — but because I was taught to see the Ark as a symbol of mercy and salvation.
But for the provision of the Ark, the whole of sinful humanity would have been lost.
Maybe it’s just me, but a comprehensive understanding of the depravity of man juxtaposed against the mercy of God leads to a pretty well-adjusted life.
Walter says:
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 11:19pm
Maybe it’s just me, but a comprehensive understanding of the depravity of man juxtaposed against the mercy of God leads to a pretty well-adjusted life.
It’s just you.
davidstarlingm says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 9:46pm
Thanks for agreeing that I lead a well-adjusted life.
randal says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 12:17am
I appreciate your comments, but the main point of my post remains: Christians have presented the story of Noah’s ark in a way that is deeply distorted. It simply is not appropriate material for a light-hearted children’s musical. An adult lamentation perhaps, but not a child’s musical.
davidstarlingm says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 9:48pm
I definitely agree with you that obscuring the nature of the Flood event for the sake of sanitizing the whole idea does a great disservice to children.
I don’t, however, necessarily think that elementary-aged children are too young to gain a rudimentary understanding of the depravity of the human race.
cl says:
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 11:25pm
It’s not just you, David.
Walter says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 12:26am
Yeah, those villainous antediluvians got what was coming to them…just like most people today are going to get what’s coming to them. But thank God that me and my family are counted among the righteous!
Thank you God for making me just a little better than the rest of wretched humanity–just like Noah. Amen.
The Atheist Missionary says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 12:47am
This is a brave post by someone who espouses Christian ideals without getting mired down by the crap in the Bible.
“I tell my students you don’t have to believe in the Bible to be a Christian“: Bart Ehrman [Unbelievable?, Premier Christian Radio, August 27, 2011]
Ptichman says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 1:34pm
Ehrman is a liar. I personally heard him laughing at the people who invited him to come to church in Lawrence, Kansas, a couple of years back. (Lawrence is his home town.)
He said “Can you believe these people paid me to come here and show them how ignorant they are?”
…then his little chuckle…
On a side note, don’t you think Ehrman looks a lot like Robert Englund…you know, the actor who plays Fredy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street?
randal says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 2:45pm
To make a justified claim that someone is a liar you must have evidence that the person uttered a false proposition while knowing it was false and nonetheless hoping that others would believe it true. In addition, the charge assumes that the person didn’t have a morally sufficient reason for doing this.
Ptichman says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 1:30pm
Should we teach children to be grateful that mommy did not kill them while they were still in the womb?
After all, the Supreme Court said she could if she wanted to.
randal says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 2:44pm
“Should we teach children to be grateful that mommy did not kill them while they were still in the womb?”
Let’s say that Moe was a bastard child born to a seventeen year old girl who was the child of two pro choice philosophers teaching at NYU. If I were Moe I’d be glad that my mom went against her parents’ advice by deciding to let me be born.
Jerry Rivard says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 4:40pm
The simple fact that Moe’s grandparents are philosophically pro-choice does not automatically mean that they advised their 17-year-old daughter to have an abortion.
Of course, they’re your hypothetical characters, so you can certainly stipulate what they advised. And so your point is made.
I’m just addressing the apparent assumption that anyone who is pro-choice would advise an abortion for every pregnant 17-year-old. That would be anti-choice.
davidstarlingm says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:23pm
Considering the behavior of prochoice advocates toward informed consent legislation, that’s not such a ludicrous assumption.
randal says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:25pm
Sure.
I’m just saying that a child whose mother bucks social pressures to abortion should be glad she did.
Jerry Rivard says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:52pm
Absolutely.
MGT2 says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 3:38pm
“…a comprehensive understanding of the depravity of man juxtaposed against the mercy of God…”
The more I read the kinds of objections to biblical accounts of judgment against the sins of mankind, calling into question the moral integrity of God, and the reliability of his revealed word, the clearer it becomes to me that the point of the statement above is completely missed.
One of the purposes of scripture is to show how morally abhorrent, and how costly are the sins of mankind, that any act of mercy from God towards us is nothing short of amazing Grace – so undeserving we are.
I see these objections to his judgments as us thinking that we deserve something; that we are worthy of something that God ought to give us.
Walter says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 3:59pm
MGT2, perhaps you are a “free will” type of christian versus being a predestinarian like David, but what I will say is that if God is truly sovereign as David believes, then humanity is depraved because God desired mankind’s depravity. God did not have to *react* to human initiative in inventing sin, we were programmed to sin from the get go. So God would be drowning a world of people for doing something for which they were utterly incapable of not doing.
Fortunately the story is pure fiction.
MGT2 says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 4:24pm
Walter, we are not programmed to sin, and God does not make us sin, we choose to sin. That is what makes it so abominable – we don’t have to sin (meaning, we do not have to practice sin by continued and deliberate disobedience). God decreed a consequence for such sin, but gave us everything that “pertains to life and godliness,” so that we do not have to sin. He even forgives us of sin when we ask him to, and treats us as if we never sinned at all, so that we do not have to bear those consequences.
And being fair and just, God tells us what constitutes sin, and how to avoid it. God, the Holy Spirit, will even helps us so that we do not practice sin. So when we are judged for sin, it is because we sinned with willful intent.
Walter says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 4:56pm
we are not programmed to sin, and God does not make us sin, we choose to sin
Unless you can point to a single human being that can live an entire lifetime without committing a sin as defined by Christians, then I would say that we are indeed programmed with a proclivity towards sin.
And for the record, every Christian I know continues to commit much the same “sins” as the unredeemed around them do. They just maintain a state of perpetual guilt about it. They commit a “sin” then beg forgiveness only to rinse and repeat the same process all over again two days later.
Like the bumper sticker says: not perfect, just forgiven (and forgiven and forgiven and forgiven…)
MGT2 says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 5:57pm
The Bible declares that all of us sin, every day. But God will forgive us if we confess those sins with a sincere heart not to continue doing it.
“Like the bumper sticker says: not perfect, just forgiven (and forgiven and forgiven and forgiven…”
Yeah, you are right about that, and its a shame. That is called presumptious sinning. Too many of us calling ourselves “Christians” are living a lie that does not have to be.
davidstarlingm says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:26pm
“Unless you can point to a single human being that can live an entire lifetime without committing a sin as defined by Christians, then I would say that we are indeed programmed with a proclivity towards sin.”
Cough.
I’m sure every follower of Jesus Christ could point to an individual fitting that description.
Walter says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:42pm
Cough.
Point him out then. I’m not talking about a character in a story.
Jerry Rivard says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:07pm
Cough.
So Jesus was an ordinary human being then?
As an aside, how can we possibly know that he never sinned? Isn’t that just an assumption made by those who believe he was the son of God, or God incarnate, or whatever? Where is the proof?
As another aside, if evidence ever turned up that Jesus did sin, what would that do to Christian belief? Randal has no problem with the idea that Jesus made theological errors; how about the idea that he made behavioral errors?
davidstarlingm says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 10:06pm
Walter: If you wanted to create a race of beings that were capable of making bad choices, and you recognized that any nonzero chance of such choices within a non-isolated society would eventually result in a domino-like cascade of self-destructive choices, would you:
A. Leave the Fall of Man up to chance, allowing every person to fail in different ways at different times, with no possibility of any universal remedy, or
B. Orchestrate a scenario in which all humans would fall in the same way through the same arc through the same inherited set of flaws, allowing salvation and redemption to be accomplished for all time in one ineffably orchestrated act?
You tell me.
Walter says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 10:32pm
If you wanted to create a race of beings that were capable of making bad choices…
Maybe it isn’t such a great idea to make a race of people that make bad choices in the first place, eh?
davidstarlingm says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:44pm
I’m sure we would all agree that a universe in which contrast is permitted to exist may potentially be more rewarding than a universe in which contrast is not permitted to exist.
Walter says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:47pm
Will this contrast exist in Heaven or the New Earth or whatever it is you believe in?
Will your new resurrected self be capable of making bad choices?
clamat says:
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 11:13pm
davidstarlingm,
Expanding on Walter’s point (he beat me to it!):
Making good choices is an exercise of free will, right? So why couldn’t God have made a race of beings whose overwhelming nature was to freely choose the good, rather than the “depraved”? Wouldn’t free will be served equally well by creating a fundamentally graceful race, rather than a fundamentally depraved one? As another put it: Why can’t God create a world in which He foresees that people will freely choose to do what is right, rather than one in which He foresees that they will freely choose to do wrong? Where the threat of Hell is the exception, rather than the Rule.
From here it looks like God simply wanted to create a race of beings that would have to beg for mercy for acting according the nature He instilled in them. Man didn’t Fall, he was Pushed.
Why does there need to be a “universal remedy”? Is God incapable of judging each individual, and their individual failures, individually? Are the administrative logistics just too big a headache?
davidstarlingm says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:19pm
“Wouldn’t free will be served equally well by creating a fundamentally graceful race, rather than a fundamentally depraved one?”
I’m not particularly concerned with preserving free will; questions of determinism are quite challenging in their own right. What I am concerned with is the chance to appreciate good by way of contrast.
It could also be hypothesized that “a fundamentally graceful race” is not actually possible. In other words, if there is a chance of corruption, it will multiply itself. To be “fundamentally graceful” means there is a chance, however small, of being graceless; it’s easy to see how a very small margin of evil would inevitably spread.
“Why does there need to be a ‘universal remedy’? Is God incapable of judging each individual, and their individual failures, individually?”
Not at all. Christians believe that God will be judging each individual individually at the Great White Throne. That’s the default. The Cross is the universal remedy to the default horror.
pete says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:52am
“Making good choices is an exercise of free will, right? So why couldn’t God have made a race of beings whose overwhelming nature was to freely choose the good, rather than the “depraved”? Wouldn’t free will be served equally well by creating a fundamentally graceful race, rather than a fundamentally depraved one?”
Clamat:
One possible yet not perfect notion would be to ask yourself the following:
Do we marry a spouse, or beget a child only if they will love us?
As much as we love them, and want them to love us, can or should we force it or manipulate it? Can or should we shelter them from any free choice?
And are there consequences if they run away? (marry and abusive spouse who gets them to CHOOSE drug trafficking; or kids hanging out with a bad crowd who convinces the child to CHOOSE to rob the elderly and beat people because of the color of their skin or sexual orientation)
And if as moral people we agree that for the betterment and protection of society, in conjunction with dennunciation and punishment, those who commit crimes need to be imprisoned, can we cry foul if the prisoner happens to be our own spouse or child?
I know that these analogies pale greatly in comparison to the Traditional Christina Doctrine of Hell, but is it a possible moral and logical starting point?
Not to mention: what factor do we give to the sleazy new spouse, or the flash-mob fanatics?
If one is going to impugne the character of God for the decreed and promised judgements witnnessed by the Holy Spirit through scripture, than one has to also give weight to the doctrine of demonology and how that plays a role.
You can’t just say, “God set us up for failure, and becasue of that he doesn’t exist and/or I won’t worship him”
Christian Theology posits that God set laws; humans broke them; consequences happpen.
To ignore all the other factors is like blaming the cops for applying the law to someone being a crook. And we also take a look at the conspirator and the mastermind of the criminal organization.
Critique of Christian Theology cannot be complete without a fair study of Satan and Demonology.
I am reading an intriguing book by Dr. Syd Page, “Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan & Demonology”.
I’ll update everyone when I’m done.
While I can still sympathize with people who have doubts over the legitimacy of eternal concious torment, unless we are in a morally perfect position to judge a morally perfect hypothesis (namely God, for arguments sake), we should logically recognize that we may not be in the best position to make that judgement.
God isn’t a jerk for making us and trying to love us. And God is not a jerk for punishing his creation……. sans nepotismo.
clamat says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:09pm
pete,
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how your response really addresses my question. Namely, wouldn’t a God-made creature whose nature was to be good rather than depraved still have free will? Can you clarify?
In any event, your analogy of God as celestial Parent and Police Officer fails.
Children grow up and become independent adults. And this is not because they are truly “equal” to their parents: I will always have more experience (and, if I continue to educate myself, knowledge) than either of my boys. I may even always be taller, stronger, faster, smarter, and wiser. (I hope not, but it’s possible.)
But when they turn eighteen, I can no longer tell them what to do. They will have an equal right to vote and change the laws to which we will all be equally beholden. If I assumed to exert total authority over my children for all eternity, they would rightly brand me a tyrant. God assumes the role of Police Officer – and Legislature, Judge, and Jury. Until God gives us some say in how things are going to be, and is himself subject to the same standards, he is simply the Supreme Tyrant.
God set up the entire system to operate exactly according to his desires. He set up the laws, both moral and physical. He set up the world in which those laws would operate. He created human nature and our corresponding ability or inability to resist temptation. Then, knowing we couldn’t resist, he chose to put both the tree and the serpent in the garden! All of this to fulfill some divine plan. Truly, God is literally the Supreme “Manipulator.”
Ah yes, it’s “possible.” Let’s keep that word in mind.
To be clear, I don’t believe in a god because there’s no good logical or empirical evidence that any god exists.
As far God’s aims, acts, laws, and punishments bear on God’s existence (as opposed to his nature), I’m arguing that (1) the Bible depicts a deity whose actions and laws do not, on their face, appear moral or consistent or fair, which (2) makes the Christian God highly unlikely.
The God of the Bible is not impossible. But “not impossible” is an extremely low bar. The better question is “how probable is it?” The God of the Bible appears to be vicious, arbitrary, inconsistent, inefficient, capricious, and unfair as any tyrant — which strongly suggests that he’s highly improbable.
MGT2 says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 11:09am
“To ignore all the other factors is like blaming the cops for applying the law to someone being a crook.”
“…unless we are in a morally perfect position to judge a morally perfect hypothesis (namely God, for arguments sake), we should logically recognize that we may not be in the best position to make that judgement.”
Excellent points, among many. But these highlight the slanted predicate of much of the objections to God’s judgment of sin.
Walter says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 11:52am
“…unless we are in a morally perfect position to judge a morally perfect hypothesis (namely God, for arguments sake), we should logically recognize that we may not be in the best position to make that judgement.”
If I cannot judge Yahweh to be *bad* by the actions he has allegedly committed in the Hebrew bible, then neither do Christian cheerleaders get to tell me that Yahweh is *good*. Apparently all we can do is suspend judgment concerning a transcendent being whose ways are so beyond ours. But since this being does not show “himself” nowadays, and the only way “he” has supposedly revealed himself is through an old book, then I would assume that “he” expects me to judge his actions by what was allegedly revealed in that special book. And what I read makes me believe that “he” is far less than morally perfect. I have as much right to make a negative assessment as anyone else has to make a positive one while reading these same texts.
MGT2 says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 12:00pm
“I have as much right to make a negative assessment as anyone else has to make a positive one while reading these same texts.”
You certainly do, Walter, you certainly do.
davidstarlingm says:
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:22pm
Walter: Could you point out what you consider to be a couple of the most egregious examples of immoral action by God as recorded in the Bible?
For each, please note what universal moral principle was being violated, and what alternative could have been less immoral under the given set of circumstances.
Thanks!
Brad Haggard says:
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 3:48pm
Randal, I thought you might be interested in this article on violence in video games, in light of this discussion. I’m not sure exactly where I stand.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/09/violence/trackback/
randal says:
Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 3:17am
Fascinating article. I like the graphic where pretty much everything looks to a little boy like a gun. Like you, I’m left with mixed feelings.