Comment by Christine Manville Greenland on 12th mo. 6, 2011 at 9:04am

Thanks for this, Patricia... I often find younger Friends (middle school and older) much more interested in the structure of the Bible, as well as the stories... Since I frequently teach when parents are present, their ideas go into the mix.  I agree that the Crucifixion is problematic, unless it is to point out that the humanity of Christ engages God with human suffering... I'm still working that out for myself.

One time, we were working with the book of Jonah, and the kids really "got it"... The parents, however, where pretty shocked by the insights their kids had during the theater improv session. 

Throwing Jonah overboard didn't phase the parents, but repentance? The kids got down, pounded the floor, told God they were so sorry that they'd done wrong -- and some parents were horrified. Turned into a teachable moment for the parents -- and me. The most amazing lesson I learned is that God "appointed" a plant to shade the sulking Jonah (Chap. 4) and then "appointed" a worm to eat the plant so that Jonah was -- in a word -- steamed. Two of the younger folk acted that out with great glee -- and it taught me a lot about spiritual growth and unfolding, as well as providence and my own fumings. We all discussed that.

I had not prompted anything, just asked the group to interpret the texts for themselves)... Parents were invited to be part of the groups, too. One or two participated.  Some told me privately that they were distressed at what came out of their children's interpretations of the text. I assured them that this is all right. I find myself arguing with Bible texts all the time. Wrestling with it.

In terms of "sin"... sometimes this is understated in the original languages (Hebrew, Greek). It can simply mean "outsider", or it can mean "rebellion".  This opens up so much in terms of discussion "When have you felt like an outsider?" "When have you felt that you didn't want to do as you were told?"  Followed by the questions "Tell me more about..."

One of the most successful forays I had was to ask a younger person in my son's age cohort "What would your parents say if you had stayed behind in the temple at Jerusalem and your parents didn't know where you were?"  This opened up a very interesting conversation -- and conversations we should be having with our younger Friends.

Comment by Isabel Penraeth on 12th mo. 6, 2011 at 9:47am

Thanks, Friend Patricia, for posting this. I do think we sometimes forget that God is entirely capable of Reaching our children, no matter what intellectual errors we may commit as parents and teachers.

Comment by Patricia Barber on 12th mo. 6, 2011 at 9:53am

Christine -- Your efforts at teaching the Bible sound a lot more creative and successful than mine! I am much amused at the parents reaction to repentance vs throwing Jonah overboard. I have found good old-fashioned repentance to be critical to my spiritual growth because it has forced me to come to terms with (to paraphrase Thomas Merton) "the contagion of my own obsessions, my aggressiveness, my ego-centered ambitions, my delusions about ends and means, my doctrinaire prejudices and ideas." I now perceive repentance as positive and necessary - sort of clearing out all the old underbrush - rather than the negative and self-damaging which is how some people perceive it today. I also have no problem with "sin" although I do take your point about meanings lost in translation. But that's another discussion...

Perhaps having the parents present when you teach the Bible is a good idea - they can weigh in immediately if they have a problem rather than ambush you later. 

Comment by Christine Manville Greenland on 12th mo. 8, 2011 at 4:06pm

And actually talk about it with the kids afterwards... :-)  The reverse happened at another meeting. Some of my dear Friends were teaching from Ecclesiastes... My son (who had read the entire Bible -- another story for another time) questioned their interpretation... They approached me demanding to know why he had the temerity to challenge their views. I was puzzled until I got both sides of the story.  (My son was 11 or 12 at the time -- a questioning time, for certain).

I suggested that my son contact someone who had studied the text carefully --  a well-known Friend. I commented that there were other Bible scholars around, too -- some of whom he knew in other contexts.

So after a week of exchanged e-mails, my son's interpretation was affirmed ... I was copied on the exchange. Together we put together a list of suggested references, and simply handed the list to the teachers, suggesting they might find it interesting.

A few years later, I was in seminary, taking a class on the Apocalypse of John. My son, then in college, was delighted, and we had lively discussions on interpretation.

The moral of the story is harks back the original reason my son had read the Bible. He had gotten in serious enough trouble at school that I packed up the television and video games until he could manage to get his act together. There were several older Bibles (mostly presentation Bibles given to long departed relations). He read each one cover to cover. So here's this 12-year-old who has read the text in several versions, and makes of it what any 12-year-old might. 

Not only that, but he had read George Fox's and John Woolman's Journals, and had (I think) begun on Barclay's Apology. Pity the 1st day school teacher with a kid like that in the class, particularly if they're just going for basics. I don't make many assumptions on knowledge or lack thereof. I just find it's better with parents as a part of the conversation -- and vice versa... In adult classes, I welcome younger people. They will absorb something.

Comment by Emma Woolliams on 12th mo. 10, 2011 at 4:43am

The most memorable children's meeting of my childhood (liberal Friends meeting, UK, we were all teenagers at the time) was the one when we each took a different translation of the Bible and comparing them, wrote our own version of "Matthew 5, vs 17 onward". I didn't know anything about it, or its context, but I was amazed by the text. We didn't have it explained to us, we just read and talked, and reworded. Years later, when I returned to Quaker meetings after a 15 year absence, that's the text I started with when I felt drawn to read the Bible. 

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