At times we hear from kids ministry leaders who are troubled by the violence in the biblical accounts of some of the session content. One pastor asked us how we approached the planning process:
How did you balance the need to convey the biblical message and keep it age appropriate? How do you respond to the modern desire to keep children from being exposed to the violence in the Bible?
There are two approaches to telling preschoolers and elementary kids stories that contain violence.
Avoid the Violence
The first approach is to leave the violent stories for Bible storybooks at home and not tell the stories in a group setting. Parents choose what stories to tell their kids and when to tell them. At church, the violent parts are excised. (For example, in 1 Samuel 17, the focus might be on David taking food to his brothers, not David’s slaying of Goliath.)
Just the Facts
The second approach is to tell the stories that contain violence, but to leave out any additional graphic detail or sensationalism that might distract from the point of the story. Along these lines, you’d tell a preschooler how God helped David kill the giant with a slingshot and five stones, and how this story helps us marvel at the power of God to do great things through ordinary people. You wouldn’t need to focus attention on David cutting off Goliath’s head, etc.
Many curriculum options for kids take the first approach. The Gospel Project takes the second. We stick with the facts of the story without dwelling on the violence.
Why We Tell the Stories
Here are the reasons we tell the violent stories:
- Small kids, especially preschoolers, may not fully understand death, but we believe they are far more perceptive than we give them credit for.
- Some of the world’s most beloved fairy tales are violent (“The Little Red Riding Hood” or “Hansel and Gretel”), but because of our familiarity with these stories, we tend to overlook the violent elements and tell them to our kids anyway. Why would we tell our kids imaginary stories from culture and not true stories from the Old Testament?
- We’ve discovered that, as teachers, it’s our own unfamiliarity with the Bible that causes us concern when telling these stories. The teacher who is shocked by the story of Achan or Ehud or Jael has no trouble with Noah’s Ark (where God destroyed every living creature) or Abraham and Isaac (where a father almost stabbed his son). In this case, we teachers need to learn about the little-known stories and see the most familiar stories with fresh eyes.
- Violence in the Bible shows us how bad our sin is and what our sin leads to. We go from a perfect garden to a brother killing his brother. The good news of the gospel grows brighter when we see the darkness of sin.
- Our kids encounter violence in this sin-filled violent world. We can shelter our kids from hearing about school shootings or terrorist attacks… for a time. But eventually, the reality of our fallen world will confront them. It’s important for kids to know that God is not surprised by tragedy or unable to work in the midst of violence.
- The most important story in the Bible is the most gruesome and most troubling – the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s not necessary to show bloody pictures or sensationalize the details of crucifixion. But surely we must tell our kids the story of Christ’s sacrificial death for us. Unjust violence leading to cosmic restoration is the heart of the Christian faith.
Figuring out the age appropriateness of introducing certain stories is something that individual parents and teachers must discern. As curriculum providers, we do our best to walk a fine line. We want to faithfully tell the stories of the Bible in ways that focus on their main point without being distracted by or without denying the violent elements in the stories.
I love it! So well put and makes me think differently. However, I do believe some stories are told one way to a 2 yr old and as they age, more details are given. They receive knowledge at their level of understanding & attention span with the repition that helps them gain understanding more and more without boredom.
Churches have been doing the first approach for years. They focus on the cute animals walking around with old Noah and his family while the rest of humanity is being summarily executed in a flood, and a chubby-cheeked, smiling David hurling a stone into Goliath’s head. Violence is externally simple but morally complex, and while I don’t think kids should be sheltered from this, it can be hard to differentiate why some violence was ok with God and some wasn’t. The take-away from the flood story should be sorrow for humanity reaping the consequences of sin, as we feel about the fall, instead of “oh, look at all the animals”.
It’s interesting that the fairy tale point was brought up, b/c I feel that’s how we treat “kids” Bible stories.
Teaching Biblical stories that are violent only shows how we as humans are sinful…and how God views that sin. Am teaching the Judges right now and let me tell you, God doesn’t like disobedience!!! But then we have Jesus, who forgives. If you understand God’s reaction to sin in light of our own redemption through Jesus, then the Bible is complete, balanced…and trust me, kids understand. They don’t focus on the bad…they get the message!!! Hang in there!!!
Age is indeed a huge variable in how you tell the story. For the kids who are old enough to handle it, (think my preteen 10, 11, 12 year olds) I really enjoy the deep discussions we have on these issues. I emphasize and help them imagine being Isaac with Abraham about to stab him, etc; because it leads to great discussions on the important truths from the story. Of course, I do so in small groups with a lot of discernment and knowledge of the kids to whom I am speaking. I end up contextualizing my teaching to each group with which I am working.
I would contend that reasons 6, 4 and 3 (in that order) are the only justification we really need within that church. Though, I can see how the remaining options could be useful in explaining why we teach it to those outside the church. I would add that it dangerous when we start picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to teach kids. Should we use some discernment – absolutely. I don’t want to teach my five year old about Song of Solomon, but I do want him to know it’s in there and that it’s there for a reason. We can’t create a Disneyfied world where everyone is happy and at the same time convince a kid about their need for a Savior. They know that evil is out there from a very early age. We owe it to them to give them a biblical understanding of why it exists and how they should deal with evil both in the world and in their heart.
Children need to learn everything about the Bible and God’s Word. It is all about how it is presented to them. Though I do believe that some things should be touched on at a later age.
While I agree that there is a way to appropriately teach the harder realities in the Bible to our kids, I’ll put myself out there and say that we decided to skip sessions 3 and 4 of the Joshua unit. One of the pitfalls of the chronological approach is that you can spend week, after week, after week teaching stories of murder, war, and God’s judgement. For our early elementary kids, it’s just too long. They don’t have enough foundational understanding of God’s goodness and mercy to make it through that many weeks of the hard stuff. Yes, TGP brings it back around to that at the end of each video, but I would submit that the 30 seconds spent aren’t enough to balance it out. I still think this is the best curriculum out there, but I’m not afraid to let a few of the battles wait until they’re a bit older.
I’m struggling with this. How do you articulate Jael driving the tent stake into Cisera’s skull to a mixed class of 4-7 yr olds? Is teaching kids the method and manner in which she killed him that important? I can understand it maybe being in the teenage curriculum but why doesGospel Project have it in the preschool curriculum why is this biblically necessary? Teen curriculum I could understand a bit more. But not this.
Hi, David. Just to clarify, the preschool story did not include the detail of how Sisera was killed. Here is that part of the Bible story:
Sisera went to the tent of Jael (JAY uhl) because he and Jael’s husband were friends. Jael said, “Come in! Don’t be afraid.” Jael gave Sisera something to drink and covered him with a rug. “If a man comes looking for me,” Sisera said, “tell him I’m not here.” Sisera was so tired that he fell into a deep sleep. While Sisera was sleeping, Jael killed him.
I’m glad to know that was not included in the preschool curriculum, but unfortunately it didn’t effect how the stories were recently taught at our church. I would submit a few responses to these kinds of stories being included in TGP curriculum for young children.
First, the fact that children are often more perceptive than we give them credit for is exactly why my 5 year old shouldn’t fully hear these stories yet. I don’t know what exactly she is perceiving about God, and she cannot explain to me all of her conclusions about who God is from what she’s been taught. Some are subconscious and she couldn’t tell me if she wanted to because she doesn’t even know. If stories like Jael are not taught extremely well, and given a whooole lot of context, a lot can be misunderstood and perceived wrongly. And even then, there are some things that a 5 year old simply can’t understand very well, since I know it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around all the implications of a story like that. So just because children are perceptive doesn’t mean those perceptions are accurate!
And when it comes to fairy tales, my kids understand that sin is in the heart of every person. They get that people who don’t know God can do some pretty bad things, and that can be understood at a young age. But those fictional characters are NOT believers and are not representing God! And they know this because we talk about it. It’s a quick and fairly simple conversation. But that’s very different from real life stories where people who were following God killed someone brutally. What about the 10 commandments and thou shalt not murder? How is this different? Is every teacher explaining the difference between murder and killing? The difference that we see in the Bible when it comes to war and regular life? Because there are some realities that are true in war that are NOT ok otherwise. Does every teacher explain that Israel was a theocracy at the time of Ehud and all that that meant for the people of Israel in the story of King Eglon? Because to me that is huge. All this is to point out that there are so many differences when God, who has the right to kill whomever He chooses, slaughters a people (or the whole earth) versus when He commissions a person to do it. God has the right to do that because He is holy. No human being has the same rights God has. In my opinion, all the complexities of this kind of situation gives more than enough reason to wait until my children are preteens to delve into all the factors you need to Biblically understand stories like this. I simply do not understand why it should be a priority before age 9 or 10.
I feel strongly that what my children believe about God is the most important thing in their lives. In anyone’s life. And I didn’t think I needed to protect them from what would possibly be taught poorly through TGP. But I realize some of that is also a failure of the teachers at our church to use the curriculum appropriately. I’d welcome feedback for any of these points I made. It’s always possible I’m missing some things.
These are exactly some of my concerns too!
Thanks for the reply Brian. You are correct that the preschool curriculum didn’t require us to teach at that level of detail (stake in forehead) I should have been more specific. I have been bothered by the videos. The one for this lesson, as I recall had Cisera comment about taking the nap with the rug over his head. Even if it’s taught as “She killed him” the 5-6 yr old student will ask “But he thought he was safe… In his friend’s tent.. ” They aren’t ready for that. Other videos, x’s over the eyes of cattle in the 10 plagues. I got asked “Why did God kill all the animals” I tried to explain that He was thus taking away the Egyptians livestock, an asset. The video put me in that situation. I’m fine with a just the facts approach but it seems that this particular curriculum is starting to embrace the “we won’t avoid the violent stories” thing a bit too much. Example 3. Saul being a bad choice for a king video. Again we have attention drawn to his disobedience for not destroying all of the animals.. Again with why would God want to kill animal type questions from 5 year olds. Stuff that I don’t expect to have to address til they are older but TGP forces it upon us. I now preview the videos from every lesson. Even the ones I don’t teach so that I can prep my daughter at least. It needs to be toned down for preschool. That is opinion and I’m praying about it of course.
Thank you for your thoughts. I know that all mean well.