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.

I Don't Read Postcards from Hell

I got a soul that I won't sell, 

And I don't read postcards from hell. 

- The Wood Brothers

It's been about a year and a half since I wrote this post, "Crazy Jesus Parables and Dead Pigs." In hindsight, it's a rather cryptic post. I don't give any context to why driving out demons and the house of the impure spirits meant something to me right then, that fall; I don't let on that I felt like I was constantly pushing off the temptation to engage another man who was interested in me, I don't let on that I did not want anything to do with him but I also didn't mind hearing that someone found me attractive, I don't share how conflicted I felt, how guilty I felt, how weak and needy and lonely I felt, even though my husband was around, yes, around, but I missed him. I was distracted and tense, trying desperately to stay pure, to resist temptation, to keep it together.

I wrote about what was happening in my life but I didn't really write what was happening in my life. My world was under threat, and I was the first guard at the gate. What better weapon to wield than the Word of God? 

I am not sure what would have become of me and my marriage if it wasn't for the Bible. 

This sounds crazy. 

Crazy Jesus Parables and Dead Pigs sustained me. Letters from the epistles reminded me what to do when my emotions reeled, when my immediate heart's desire was to be filled, to be filled with something, anything, when the easiest access was this other man who so readily handed out compliments, who readily flirted, who assumed I wanted to hear these things... and I did.

Except I wanted to hear them from my husband, the man I had committed to love, til death do us part, not him.

As fall crept into winter and winter sloshed into spring, resistance built on resistance, brick by brick. Gradually, it passed. It passed, and I survived. Our marriage survived. The notes and emails from him didn't stop, entirely, and some of the things he said ran on a random loop in my brain, but I knew what was right. I knew what was good. I knew what was true.

Lately, my guilt and shame about being tempted at all has dissolved away into rage. How dare he? I find myself thinking, from the safe distance of a healed marriage, from behind the wall of love and security my husband has built around me. This is one truth: I did not ask for those things. The realization that what I put up with for almost a full year could have been, should have been, called sexual harassment, this realization obliterates everything else.

Almost.

Because this is another truth: I was still vulnerable. There is something inside me that longed to be filled, to be openly adored and desired, and, let's face it, after nine years of marriage, isn't everyone a little tired of trying so hard all of the time? The temptation was strong. It would be a lie to push the burden of responsibility entirely onto the other person. But it would also be a lie to take the full weight of that responsibility.

From this side of mercy, Brandon and I tell each other all things. Everything has been laid bare here; every temptation, every hurt, every longing. He has seen it all, and he still loves me. He loves me, he loves me, he loves me.

From this side of mercy, I see the Word of God a bit differently. As a new believer, I viewed the Bible and its rules as guidelines to earn God's love and acceptance. The B-I-B-L-E: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. How clever. The laws of God were given to keep me in line; if I followed them, then God would bless me. If I broke them, God would turn his back on me.

Over and over again, the psalmists praise God's laws and precepts. "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long," the psalmist says in Psalm 119. What?! How could someone sing about rules? How could someone love the law, those restrictions, those barriers, how could someone praise God for the law?

From this side of mercy, however, I find myself singing along with the psalmist, "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long." It was the law, the Word of God, that showed me the way and said, now walk in it. The heart only wanted to be filled, immediately. I used to think the Law was given to earn God's love, but now I see that the Law was given as a gift of love from God. The Law was a grace bearer. The Law, fulfilled in Christ, delivered me. 

Here, child. I love you. I don't want to see you in pain. Here, let me tell you what to do, even though you think this is the hardest thing you could do, here, let me show you the way so that you might walk in it, so that you might walk into the valley, through the desert, and enter the promised land. You will persevere; perseverance will produce character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint. You will do more than survive, my child, you will thrive.

Daily I sing, from this side of mercy, from this side of grace, from the broken but healed side of redemption, "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long."

Crazy Jesus Parables and Dead Pigs

Lately I've taken to listening to the audio Bible on YouVersion's Bible app in the mornings as I exercise or as I'm getting ready for work.  I have been out of spiritual practice, so since I'm exercising regularly, I figure coupling my physical exercise with some kind of spiritual exercise is a wise move.

I'm listening to the Gospels right now because it feels like it's been a while since I listened to stories about Jesus or read anything about Jesus.  We're real good at talking about the behaviors expected of Christians and the rules and regulations to live a more Christian life, because that's the stuff we have control over to some degree, and man, we love rules.  But the Gospels are bewilderment, mystery, magic, confusion, frustration, rebellion, storytelling, crazy faith, epic failure.  The epistles are a bunch of friends who come around regularly to nudge you back on the right path. Jesus is the model for how his followers should look in contrast to societal norms, and it's a certain kind of crazy awesome weird.

I'm reminded of this as I listen to Jesus tell stories to his disciples, as I hear the narrator tell stories about Jesus healing people, about demons driven out into a herd of pigs and about pigs dashing off a cliff, about how scared people were, how they asked Jesus to leave their region but the healed man asked to go with Jesus, and how Jesus told him to stay and tell people about God's mercy, and I imagine how angry the farmer must have been to hear his 2,000 pigs were dead because of Jesus, how hard it is to see past our own griefs into the miraculous.  That herd of pigs seems to follow me throughout the day.  Do I rejoice that Jesus healed a man or am I angry that he took away my profit this season?  I don't even have a herd of pigs, what am I talking about?  What is my herd of pigs, my prized possession I would never sacrifice, not even for another man's life?

The Holy Spirit must use some circumstances, people, places, or creatures to carry off the demons in our lives.  Lots of country songs talk about how a song can bring back a memory; I wonder if the opposite is also true.  I think some people are put into our lives in particular seasons, and maybe without knowing it, they carry our demons away, through a conversation or interaction, they carry away whatever it was we were struggling with.  Our burdens are cast away with that person.

This morning, I listened to Jesus tell a bunch of parables about Israel.  The one that stuck with me throughout the day goes like this: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation" (Matthew 12:43-45).

After Jesus drove out the demons in the possessed man and sent them into the pigs, he told the man to tell his family how much the Lord had done for him, about the mercy that was shown to him.  And he did.  He filled the empty places that were left by the demons with the fruits of the Spirit, spreading the story about how a Man came who cared for him so much that he drove a legion of demons out from inside his spirit, who carried away the terrors that possessed him, who ordered them away and restored him to himself, a fuller version of himself, one absent of impure spirits and filled with the spirit that produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Imagine what it would have looked like for the man to have returned to his family without this miracle story.  To resume his every day life, whatever that might have looked like.  To leave his soul wide open, swept clean and vacant for whatever other demons might come to dwell there.  It's a dramatic portrait, like a foreclosure in the country, grasses and vines swallowing a house, slowly gripping its foundation and crumbling the concrete that held it up. Without regular maintenance and the presence of people to take care of the structure, all things degenerate and are consumed, governed only by the laws of nature.  It isn't enough to kick out the demons of our past.  Something better needs to move in.

I've carried the story of the impure spirit around with me today.  It lodged in my heart as a reminder to do the daily maintenance required in order to keep the ugly out and invite whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, or admirable in.  Daily I send out the demons to drown with the herd of pigs.