Children, Imagination and the Bible

Once upon a time deep in the roots of an old oak tree Little Bunny lived with his parents. Every night Mommy Bunny read him the same bedtime story about the cozy, warmth of the burrow world. Every night Little Bunny fell asleep curled up in the enveloping goodness of the only story and the only world he knew.

But one day Daddy Bunny came home with a gash in his ear. A hunter’s bullet had grazed it when he had been crossing the meadow. What’s a meadow? asked Little Bunny. And, what’s a bullet? But Mommy Bunny said shush and told him the bedtime story about the cozy, warm burrow world.

A week later Daddy Bunny came home limping. A wolf had chased him through the forest and he’d torn some muscles escaping a snare. What’s a wolf and what does torn mean and what’s a snare? wondered Little Bunny but he didn’t ask Mommy Bunny. He knew she would just tell him a bedtime story that he didn’t trust any more.

Not long after Daddy Bunny didn’t return to the burrow for three days. When he did, he could hardly walk. Little Bunny overheard him telling Mommy Bunny how he’d hid in a crevice in the mountains when a hungry hawk pinned him in place for three days, her gaze relentless. That night at bedtime Mommy Bunny had changed the story. Now it was about Good Bunnies and Bad Bunnies. Good Bunnies were bunnies who stayed in their burrows and did what they were told. Bad Bunnies left the burrow and were eaten by monsters.

One day Mommy and Daddy Bunny had to go away for a few days on business. Auntie Bunny and Cousin Bunny came to the burrow to stay with Little Bunny. Let’s go exploring, Cousin Bunny said to Little Bunny. Little Bunny looked alarmed. He had never left the burrow. Exploring? he asked. Where?

Wherever you like, laughed Cousin Bunny. We can race about in the meadow or venture into the forest or even climb up to a lookout point on the mountains.

Little Bunny was shocked. But if we leave the burrow we might get eaten by the monsters. Let’s stay here. The burrow is warm and safe.

Cousin Bunny shrugged. Suit yourself, she said, but I’m going off adventuring. Then she bounded out the door with a picnic lunch in her shoulder bag. Little Bunny stared. Was Cousin Bunny a Bad Bunny?

That night when Auntie Bunny tucked the bunnies into bed she told them a story Little Bunny had never heard before:

Once upon a time, she started, Cousin Bunny was caught in a snowstorm high in the mountains. There were howling wolves and hunters tracks all around. Cousin Bunny felt afraid but she knew what to do. She took a long, slow breath and followed the path to the burrow deep inside her. This was her superpower. This place that would always be there for her no matter where she went. Once she’d found this reassuring place Cousin Bunny set to work digging her own shelter in the snow and reaching out to her field mice and winter ptarmigan allies for friendship and support.

Little Bunny had never heard such a story. He didn’t want it to end and looked over at Cousin Bunny for her reaction. But Cousin Bunny had grown up with that story and now, exhausted from the day’s adventures on the mountain, was already fast asleep.

Undersized Stories
I’ve been a religious educator in churches across the denominational spectrum for twenty-five years and I speak from first hand experience when I say that Bible stories have fallen on hard times outside the church-going subculture. Biblical literacy has lost credibility in the public realm. Why else do I have to spend so much time justifying my own vocation, sometimes even to myself.

It’s tempting to cast blame: the rise of secular society, the collapse of Christendom, and the polarizing impact of culture wars are all easy targets.

But I’m more interested in asking how we have failed ourselves.

My suspicion is that we make the telling of Bible stories for children so safe, so small, and so predictable that, when the time comes, we don’t know how to transition into the larger, more complex plots that comprise the fuller narrative. Our default is to jump tracks and turn the stories into morality tales, character studies or the building blocks of a belief system.

By the time children hit their middle school years Bible stories have already lost credibility.

It’s not to say that we shouldn’t rear children on Noah’s ark and the love of God. Rather, to ask whether we have underestimated the capacity of children to handle complex plots.
(Aside: This may be, in part, because we aren’t sure what the plot is ourselves.)

When my daughter was ten she couldn’t get enough of the Harry Potter series which has a complex plot. We read book one, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, together. The first time ghosts passed through a wall at Hogwarts I gave her a if-this-is-too-weird-I-can-stop-reading look over the top of the page.

She took a big breath, drew in courage, and insisted I press on, and press on we did. By book three or four there was no holding her back. She had the books read before I’d found time to read the back cover.

Nor was she deterred as the plot got more and more complex (spoiler alerts!): Harry’s dysfunctional family, Tom Riddle’s evil legacy, the rise of Voldemort, the murder of Cedrick, the search for horcruxes, the angsty teen conversations, and the eventual destruction of Hogwarts which involved the death of so many characters she loved: Dumbledore, Fred Weasly, even Harry himself.

Yet, in and through it all, she was able to trust deeper currents were at play: the importance of friendship, the triumph of goodness, the peeling back of the layers to the core of love.

Stories are children’s first language. Kids process the world around them by means of story. They will stand in line for a good story. Kids will set down their iPads for a good story.

But it has to be big. There have to be stakes. There has to be risk-taking. There have to be likable characters and outcast and despicable characters. It has to align with their own fears and hopes. There have to be plot twists. They shouldn’t be able to see the end coming

But most of all the story has to add up. They have to know they have arrived, against all odds, at the only outcome possible where they put the book down in equal measures of wonder and astonishment and say, “of course.”

Here’s what I wonder: Can the Jesus story be told with a plot worthy of an eleven-year olds imagination?

Now 22, I ask my daughter whether she understood the entirety of the Harry Potter plotline when she was eleven – e.g. that Harry Potter himself was a horcrux who needed to die. She admitted at the time of first reading much of the plot was beyond her. But that didn’t stop her. She’d so fallen in love with the characters and their plight to know that she wanted to return to it again, which she did as a teen and then later as an adult. Each reading had deepened aha moments with new dimensions of the plot falling into place.

I’ve long marveled that the Christian faith is, in fact, a story. That is gold for religious educators. I only hope we find ways of rediscovering the plot for a new generation and don’t squander the wealth we’re sitting on.