Do Christian Kids Believe in Fairy Tales?

Cognitive Science magazine has an interesting article in the July issue. A survey was taken determining that children who attend church or parochial school have a more difficult time distinguishing between truth and fiction than those who don’t.

The implied conclusion is that children who attend church are taught “fantasy” stories as true, so therefore they can’t tell the difference between a true biblical event and an untrue fairy tale. Of course, the article has generated a lot of comments. One letter to the editor (chosen as opinion of the week by a newspaper) said that teaching children religion of any kind is child abuse, absolutely wrong and should be stopped by the government. Another wrote that churches have to teach children when they’re young, otherwise they wouldn’t believe.

All this is disturbing to those of us in children’s ministry.

I read it a few days ago and have been mulling the findings over in my mind. Not so much the comments – although they’re alarming – but the findings themselves.

And honestly? I wonder if we (the teachers/parents) aren’t partly to blame for this.

Because …

1. A recent trend is to water down God’s Word so as not to “scare” little kids. I remember being assigned to teach about a Bible character from a particular curriculum. The story was so watered down, I didn’t even recognize it. Another time a dad was angry because we taught the kids (kindergarten and up) about Paul and Silas being in jail. He didn’t want his child knowing that the men were in prison.

2. We reduce Bible events to “cutesy” stories. Noah’s ark is not a gigantic ocean liner, but a tiny wooden boat merrily rocking back and forth on the waves. The elephant is on deck and the giraffe has her head out the window. We’ve made it so cute, we paint it on the walls of the church nursery. (Of course, there’s nothing wrong with painting animals on the nursery wall, but my guess is very little of Noah’s story lends itself to the walls of a church nursery.)

Likewise we portray Daniel with cuddly lions and Jonah’s fish looks like something we’d swim with at Sea World. Don’t think that’s the way it was. The lions were mean and hungry and Jonah’s fish swallowed a man! Whole!

3. Media access encourages us to create videoes and web pages with appealing and hilariously funny biblical narratives, whether nor not they’re correct. Bible events are made to be funny, rather than the monumental life-changing events that they really are.

(Many DVDs and web pages do excellent jobs of teaching kids the truth without changing the biblical record, but many others don’t.)

I’m not suggesting that we teach 2 Kings 2:23-24 to Cubbies (after all, it’s a bear story), but I do think we need to teach the Bible in all it’s reality.

Why shouldn’t we teach kids that the whole world (with the exception of Noah) rebelled against God? Why shouldn’t we teach them about Noah’s faith (no he wasn’t perfect, but he trusted God) and God enabled him to build a boat big enough for his family and all the animals. Why shouldn’t we teach them that the lions were mean and hungry, but that God rescued Daniel, a man of faith? Why shouldn’t we tell them that Paul and Silas were thrown in jail because of their faith? (In some parts of the world today, many children are seeing the same thing happen in their own families. Just because it’s not happening in suburbia, doesn’t mean it’s not current reality.)

Maybe we, as children’s ministry leaders, need to stop teaching the events of the Bible as sweet fairy tales – because they’re not. These are events that happened to real people, people with fears, imperfections and struggles … just like people today.

Maybe our emphasis needs to switch from the people in the story to the God who gave them their courage (Daniel), their faith (Noah), their joy (Paul and Silas).

Maybe we’re partly to blame for the results of this survey.

What do you think?