Reading the Bible with My Kids

We started reading the first book of the Bible, Genesis, with our kids this month. Up until now, besides praying with them and the occasional aside about God's love and being kind and other such directives throughout the day, we've left the Bible up to their Sunday school classes. Illustrated pictures and crafts are easier to handle, and really, I don't think our kids were ready to hear and make any sense out of the Bible. Now that we've moved and aren't part of a traditional church currently, I felt like we should be doing something.

I also read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to kick off the new year with some what I assumed would be butt-kicking spiritual writing, and I was right on that part. I didn't expect the how-tos of living in community to be as direct about daily readings with your family, even with young children. If you are looking for a simple, clear and inspiring account of what Christian community can look like and how to get there, read Life Together.

The trick with all things that seem clear and simple is implementation. "Love God and love one another" is so simple and yet here we are, wars, terrorism, greed, selfishness, murder, violence, etc.

I expected resistance from the kids and instead found anticipation. At dinner time, they remind me that we haven't read from the Bible yet today, and so I open it up and dive in.

The strangest truths come out of my mouth as I'm reading. Not so much the text itself, although they are fascinated by it, but my midrash of it. Beyond just reading what is on the page, midrash is a practice in Judaism of interpreting and analyzing the text, filling in the gaps where details are only hinted at. For instance, one might extrapolate "the beasts of the field and the birds of the air" to include the wallaby and the peacock, the platypus and the jellyfish.

We are only four chapters in to Genesis, and a lot has happened already. There was creation, to start. That was something. Then you've got the temptation and deception in the garden, the discovery of shame, sex and babies, murder, lying, pride, arrogance, and bigamy. That's a lot going on up in here. Without any kind of guidance or extrapolation, how are they to know what to take away from this book?

I've discovered by reading this to them for the first time a renewed energy and excitement over biblical texts. I am remembering why I read the Bible, how this book is sacred because it tells us about God's faithfulness even when we royally screw up. In this way, the bulk of the Bible is not "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth," but one of the biggest soap operas of all time interwoven with the most faithful and true love story in history.

I tell my kids, "Every time we read the Bible, God's spirit speaks a new truth or conviction into the heart of the listener." We are talking about reading the Bible over ice cream at Sweet Henrie's. "It's the only book I read over and over again."

It is a living and breathing book because we are inhaling and exhaling it together with the Holy Spirit, bringing new human knowledge and information from all across the universe to expand upon a text that was written thousands of years ago. This combination of general revelation and divine revelation expand awe and wonder rather than deflate it. The narratives and poetry teach us how God relates to us and how we can relate to him. It gives us a common reference point in a world of stories, all of which seem to me to be mini-gospels, mini-Bibles of people pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty in its many colors and iterations against a backdrop of darkness.

I tend to find slivers of God in everything, even when the other person didn't intend for him to show up. We are walking Bibles with our own bruises and injustices, arrogance and pride, our own stories of how God has intersected our lives and when we have heard him and when we have not and when we've outright ignored him. The Bible gives us access to common stories across the ages we can relate to (or not relate to) in order to see God's grace.

These strange truths leak out as we're reading stories that are on the page confusing and odd, but I have the benefit of decades over my kids, years spent reading and being taught by others, and so I can explain bigamy in the Bible. I can talk about cultural differences. I can show them God's protection and provision over Adam and Eve and Cain and beyond. I can talk about how just like in science our understanding and knowledge of God is an ever-expanding universe of detail and depth and size, and even in our sacred texts we can see our own knowledge of God unfolding. It isn't God but our understanding of God that unfolds, like a flower bud, over these thousands of years.

Yeah, I've imparted all of this wisdom on my kids four chapters into Genesis.

Their journey is just beginning, their capacity for understanding is just opening, and I am excited to be a part of that. I expect they will spin their own midrash in our readings and reveal other truths to me as well so that we can all grow together. This coupling of knowledge and wonder, this life together, it is wonderful.