Kids in the Hands of an Angry God
The Severity of God
in Contemporary American Children’s Bibles
Greg Johnson • Saint
Louis University • Spring 2000
n his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul warns his readers to contemplate two central aspects of God’s character. “Consider therefore the kindness and severity of God: severity to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.”[1] On the one hand, God’s kindness to his people, his covenant faithfulness, his mercy and grace, blessing and salvation find stress within Paul’s letter. But Paul calls his readers to consider another side of God—severity to those who fell (from faith, Paul’s referent likely the Jews who did not identify Jesus as the Christ). Throughout the pages of the Christian Scriptures, passages abound that mark a fierceness to God, likely unnerving more than one serious commentator. How do contemporary Protestant children’s bibles consider the severity of God?
One thinks of the flood in Genesis that killed all but Noah and those in his ark, or the command God gave to Abraham that he kill his child. God’s curse on the firstborn sons of Egypt and God’s later sending of snakes to kill his own people come to mind, as does the conquest of Canaan, with its divinely sanctioned genocide. And then there are stories like those of Nadab and Abihu, young priests who were burned to death in the Holy Place for offering unauthorized sacrifices, and Uzzah, whom God struck dead for touching the Ark of the Covenant. In the New Testament, one could be reminded of Jesus’ frequent warnings about hell—gehenna—everlasting death, condemnation. And how can one not remember Ananias and Sapphira, a Christian couple whose lives were taken for lying about how much they had given to the church—or the believers in Corinth who had “fallen asleep” for taking part in the Lord’s Supper without love for the brethren. I recall one woman in my church that experienced an evangelical conversion in adulthood. Having begun reading the bible through from Genesis for her first time, she exclaimed, “I never knew God killed so many people before.” Such passages are difficult enough for mature adults to handle.
But how do children’s bibles handle such biblical passages? How do they consider God’s severity? A brief survey of bibles for the youngest children found that such passages were almost universally removed—with the exception of the Genesis flood, which has remained a favorite among animal-loving children of all ages. But bibles for these youngest readers are usually storybooks with summaries of only a small selection of the Christian canon, so it is unclear how much can be inferred from the absence of passages displaying God’s severity. But among bibles for elementary school aged children—full bibles containing the entire text of the canonical books—the question necessarily arises. Children’s bibles characteristically lay heavy stress on the mercy, grace, love and approachability of God. But how do these bibles present the severity of God? Beyond functioning to introduce children to the God of the bible, in what ways do these bibles function to protect children from the God of the bible?
This study began with an examination of ten bibles for elementary school age children that were available in bookstores in March 2000. Four evangelical publishing houses account for the production of all ten bibles—Word, Zondervan, Tyndale and Thomas Nelson. Of these ten bibles, only four have annotation extensive enough for study: Zondervan’s Kid’s Study Bible and Kid’s Devotional Bible, and Thomas Nelson’s New Explorer’s Bible for Kids and The Adventures in Odyssey Bible, the last of these a joint venture with Christian psychologist James Dobson’s ministry giant Focus on the Family, producers of The Adventures in Odyssey audio and video programs. This study does not deal directly with the translations of the bibles—New International Reader’s Version, New Living Translation, and New King James Version, but only those annotations unique to each study bible.
Part I of this paper will examine ways in which these bibles function to protect children from the severity of the God of the bible. How do these bibles minimize the impact of the more stern aspects of God’s character? We will look at five ways these bibles deal with the severity of God. Part II of this paper will turn to a brief treatment of the function given the severity of God within these bibles, with a short consideration of the severity of God in light of trends in the adult church—remembering that adults produced these study bibles for children. We will conclude with a few avenues for further research, particularly as it pertains to evangelical religion.
PART I. Hiding God: Five
Ways to Deal with God’s Severity
1. The Avoidance of God’s Severity
The self-professed purpose of these bibles is to introduce children to the God of the bible. The New Explorer’s Study Bible, for example, states in its preface that “we come to know God” by meeting him through his words and deeds in the bible.[2] But these bibles to a greater or lesser extent also serve to hide the God of the bible—particularly the severity of this God—from their young readers. A chief manner in which the severity of God is hidden is by the avoidance of passages that display God’s harsher actions. As mentioned above, bibles for younger children regularly remove passages in which God acts in violence or judgment. Yet while the bibles examined in this study include the whole of the canonical text, they do not equally comment upon all types of passages. Even a quick review of any of the four will show far more comments of God’s kindness than on his severity. The Kids Devotional Bible, for example, provides no annotation at all to key biblical passages such as God’s commandment of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, or God’s curses upon the Egyptians—precisely the passages most likely to draw questions from young readers. Three of the four bibles avoid any comment on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. None of the bibles investigated offers any explanation for the Mosaic penal code, with its requirement that disobedient children be executed.
Indeed, of all the New Testament notes in the Kid’s Devotional Bible, not one deals with the more severe aspects of God’s dealings with humanity. Further, there is no reference to hell in this bible, though there is ample discussion of heaven. Again, heaven appears in the glossary at the back of the bible, but hell is curiously absent.[3] This is also the case with the Adventures in Odyssey Bible. It contains no reference to hell in its annotations, even though heaven receives frequent comment. There is also no reference to the severity of God in the New Testament annotations of the Kid’s Study Bible. Jesus’ teachings on hell, the coming Day of Judgment, the wrath of God being revealed in Romans 1, Ananias and Sapphira, the deaths of the Corinthians—none of these receives any comment or attention, despite extensive annotation of other points. And once again, while heaven is in the glossary, hell is curiously absent. In fact, hell is not mentioned anywhere in this bible.
This avoidance of God’s severity is also accomplished by softening the language used of God’s actions. The harsh edge of God’s actions within the narrative is often blunted by sanitized language. In the Kid’s Devotional Bible’s annotation, for example, God didn’t “kill” people in Noah’s flood, he “destroyed” them—a less personal image.[4] And no attempt is made to expand upon the sufferings of the condemned—no discussion of the squeals of the drowning children, for example. At the very least, one can conclude that these bibles are not seeking to emphasize God’s severity.
There are notable exceptions to this pattern of avoidance, of course. In an insert box in Genesis 7 in the Kid’s Study Bible, Noah tells his young readers, “I’ll never forget the horrible cries of the drowning people!”[5] Similarly, in its discussion of the plagues on Egypt, one finds an explanatory note about the locusts that God sent, explaining, “People died because the locusts ate their food.”[6] Also in this bible, the annotation for the curse upon the firstborn asks the young reader, “What did the Lord do in the middle of the night?”—then continues as if to drive home the point, asking, “Who died?”[7] But these examples are noteworthy because they are so rare. The general pattern is one of avoiding passages that deal with God’s severity.
2. The Shifting
of Agency for God’s Severity
A more subtle way in which God’s severity is minimized is by the shifting of agency for violent actions away from God. Where the biblical text is clear that God instigated an action, his agency is left unclear in the annotations. These bibles rarely credit God directly with anyone’s death, for example. People die; but with only a few exceptions within these bibles, God does not kill people. The Adventures in Odyssey Bible, for example, mentions in a note on the Genesis flood only that “God allowed a flood to cover all the earth,” the language suggesting that the flood came to God and asked for permission.[8]
In its annotation on the book of Judges, the New Explorer’s Study Bible exhibits this lack of clarity about divine chastisement. While at one point it mentions that “God had to punish Israel,” it later speaks of how “Disobedience is always followed by suffering,” leaving the divine agency behind such suffering unclear.[9] Does God send suffering to discipline disobedience, or is suffering simply the “natural” outcome of disobedience? Similarly, in an insert box in Genesis 22 in the New Explorers Bible, Isaac’s account of the story of his near-sacrifice specifies God’s agency only in stopping the event, not in commanding it.[10]
The note on Exodus 20 in the Kid’s Devotional Bible states that God rescued the Israelites by bringing them through the Red Sea, but that “the Egyptians drowned.”[11] Again, divine agency appears to be played down in the deaths of the Egyptians, though God is credited with sending the hail that “killed many enemy soldiers” in Joshua 10.[12] In its discussion on Numbers 21, while the Kid’s Study Bible asks why “the Lord sent snakes to bite the people,” acknowledging God’s agency in the event,[13] the Kid’s Devotional Bible, by contrast, addresses the issue as one of the people’s having “been bitten” by a snake, avoiding the question of divine agency.[14]
The New Explorer’s Study Bible was the only children’s study bible examined which made any mention of hell, defining it in two sentences commenting on Jesus’ warnings in the Sermon on the Mount. It defines hell as “A place of endless misery where people who have not received Jesus as their Savior go when they die. It is translated from a word for the burning dumping ground outside Jerusalem in Jesus’ time.”[15] The definition is repeated in Luke 12.[16] Again, however, one could note the lack of comment of God’s agency in the sufferings of hell. Hell, by implication, is a natural outcome more than a divine punishment. And hell is again absent from the glossary, though heaven receives a reference.
This is also the case in a discussion of hell that appears in a note in Luke 16, where hell is the place where “God’s love can’t be” because people love their sins. God is unable to show love to the damned because they don’t want it. The sinner’s agency in choosing hell—not God’s agency in judgment—is stressed. “Hell is a place where people can’t think lovely thoughts. Everyone who rejects the great love Jesus showed in dying for them must go there.”[17] Similarly a note mentions hell merely as “to exist without God.”[18] A comment in Jude mentions “some people” who “don’t just stumble over sin” but “fall all the way to hell. They say, ‘We don’t care about Jesus. We’re going our own way.’”[19] Still, with five references to hell, The New Explorer’s Study Bible has five more references to this teaching than any of the other bibles, even though God’s agency in condemnation is not stated.
3. The Redirection of God’s Severity
Another manner in which God’s severity is hidden within these bibles is by the often rapid redirection of readers toward the kindness of God. In the Kid’s Devotional Bible, the note on Nahum 1:3—“The LORD is slow to get angry. He is very powerful. The LORD will not let guilty people go without punishing them”—is typical of many quick redirections that appear when God’s severity is displayed. This is how the verse is explained:
God is patient. He does not zap you the minute you sin. He doesn’t push you away because you have done one thing wrong. God loves you so much. He’s willing to wait and wait for you to ask for forgiveness.
Jesus took the punishment for you sins when he died on the cross. All you have to do is admit that you’ve done wrong. God is waiting and willing to forgive you. He gives you time to come to him.[20]
In this note, the redirection is dialectical, from law to gospel. But the severity of God is not discussed, let alone emphasized. The severity of God is dealt with as a fact of the text in need of redirection. The point of the annotation is that you have time to ask for forgiveness, while the point of the biblical text is that God’s patience will end with judgment and that no guilty person will go unpunished.
A similar form of redirection takes place in this bible’s note on Hebrews 4:13, a warning that God sees everything and “will hold us accountable for everything we do.” Again, the note changes the modality of the passage from a warning of judgment to a promise of assistance. It explains, “He doesn’t watch so that he can be angry with you when you mess up. He watches so that he can help you do good.”[21] Here the concept of personal accountability is rather heavy-handedly redirected to God’s kindness.
The Kid’s Study Bible has a series of study questions on Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, speaking of the test as a “hard thing” that “God asked Abraham to do,” but quickly draws attention to God’s sending of the angel to stop the killing.[22] The effect is that there is no meditation of why God would call Abraham to kill his son, no consideration of the more severe side of God’s character.
Following this same pattern of redirection, the Kid’s Study Bible includes a discussion on Nahum 1:2-8 titled, “God is Angry.” Readers are asked, based upon the biblical text, “What things does the Lord do when he is angry?” The implied answer from the passage is that God punishes his enemies—which is the next question: “What does the Lord do to his enemies?”[23] Even here, though, a bold note lower on the page redirects the reader to the kindness of God: “REMEMBER THIS: The Lord is good. When people are in trouble, they can go to him for safety. He takes good care of those who trust in him.”[24]
The New Explorer’s Study Bible is the only children’s bible consulted to provide an illustration of an event of God’s severity. This bible includes a drawing of the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham pictured with knife outstretched, the boy tied on an altar with his head turned away—a ram in the thicket behind him. But even here the very caption of the drawing directs the reader, not to God’s severe command for a child to be killed, but to God’s kind provision of a ram, the caption under the picture reading, “God sends a ram for Abraham’s sacrifice.”[25] The language used in the note describing the sacrifice on the previous page also downplays the force of the event by redirection. “You know the end of the story,” it states. “God really didn’t let Abraham kill Isaac. It was just a test to see if Abraham believed God’s promise about his son.”[26] This was quite a test to be preceded by “just”! And Isaac didn’t know the end of the story! Such language minimizes the seriousness of the event, but it also functions to stop meditation on the extreme nature of God’s request, directing the reader instead to the outcome in which God displayed his kindness.
In some instances, acts of God’s severity are themselves redefined—very unconvincingly—as acts of divine kindness. Here the redirection happens within the motive of God himself. The note on the plagues of Egypt in the New Explorer’s Study Bible, for example, at first appears to draw attention to God’s judgment, but quickly changes the character of this judgment. The plagues on Egypt, the note implies, were an act of kindness to the Egyptians, to teach them the only way they would let themselves be taught. The note reads:
God does not enjoy judging us. But sometimes that’s the only way God can get our attention... That means we have to learn by being punished when no other way can help. Nobody likes punishment. But punishment is sometimes the kindest thing to do because it stops us from doing things that ruin our lives.
The sad truth is that some people never learn. Pharaoh of Egypt seems to be one of those people.[27]
Such a redemptive suffering-as-merciful-teaching is far from the interpretation the LORD provided to Pharaoh in Exodus: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”[28] And this is to say nothing about God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, which the annotations in all four bibles avoid (...like the plague, one might say). Even the severity of God is redefined so as to redirect the young reader to God’s kindness.
4. The Exceptional
Nature of God’s Severity
In at least one instance, a note stresses the exceptional nature of God’s severity. The Adventures in Odyssey Bible defines God’s killing of Ananias and Sapphira in this manner. “Even though God doesn’t usually deal with liars in this way, He always hates lies. Be honest with God and with others.”[29] Don’t worry, the implied message could be stated, God isn’t going to kill you for that lie you told Mommy and Daddy. This kind of passage is the exception to the rule. Normally God doesn’t do this sort of thing.
It seems surprising that more annotations within these bibles do not take this approach. The fact that only one such reference was found among all the annotations in five study bibles must itself be significant. God makes no one an example for others to learn. One can only speculate that the editors may have considered God’s “making an example” of a sinner to be unfair of God within the democratic ideals of the American child. Only bad school teachers make examples of students; good teachers treat all students equally.
5. The Justification of God’s Severity
Occasionally these children’s bibles surprise their readers by presenting the severity of God directly and without avoidance, redirection, a shift in agency or a classification as “exceptional.” In such passages, however, one senses a strongly sensed need to justify God’s actions—itself an argument that God’s severity is not easily accepted in the churches. Within the notes of these bibles, we see a God desperately needing a defense for his actions. Usually the defense centers of the sinfulness of God’s victims.
In its note on the Genesis flood, for example, the Kid’s Devotional Bible stresses the violence that characterized the world in Noah’s day. “In the time of Noah, the world was full of violence. People hurt and killed each other. They lied and stole from one another.”[30] Here the annotations are following clues stressed within the canonical text. The concern to justify God’s actions is at times present within the biblical passage itself. Calling up an image from Saturday cartoons and spaghetti westerns, the note in the Kid’s Study Bible speaks of the antediluvians twice as “the bad guys.”[31] American children know that it’s okay to kill the bad guys; they are supposed to die.
Concerning the Genesis flood, the Kid’s Study Bible, whose annotations are most frequently in the form of study questions tied to specific passages, asks its readers, “Why did God say he would destroy the earth?” anticipating the sinfulness described in the passage as a response.[32] Of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the annotation begins, “These two cities were very bad.”[33]
Upon God’s command of genocide against the Canaanites in Deuteronomy 7, the New Explorer’s Bible adds a note at the bottom of the page titled “Why God Ordered Some Nations to Be Destroyed.” The note states that God had promised the land to Abraham, and that the Canaanites were “some very wicked people,” adding that they practiced child sacrifice to other gods and doing “other kinds of horrible evil.” The note continues, “The people there had proved for a long time that they were no longer fit to live in God’s world.”
Though an extremely rare argument within children’s bibles, this note further grounds the action within the character of God, explaining, “as a judge, [God] must condemn the wicked. That is what he had to do with those who lived in Canaan when the armies of Israel came.”[34] But even here, God is only doing what “he had to do,” though it is unclear why God “had” to do it at that particular time—a notion of God’s sovereign freedom in the timing of judgment is absent, even here where God’s character is the source of his severity.
The Adventures in Odyssey Bible does include a note on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, even crediting God with the destruction—including both God’s agency and God’s sovereign freedom in judgment, God “deciding” to destroy the cities. The note defends God’s action by stressing the depravity of its residents. “In two cities, called Sodom and Gomorrah, the people became so sinful that God decided to destroy them.”[35] Similarly this bible—the only one of ten to comment of the killing of Nadab and Abihu—credits God with agency (one of only two times any of these bibles say “God killed” someone![36]). And it justifies the act by appeal to the brothers’ sinfulness; indeed, God again had no choice, a comment that functions to softens the impact of the previous statement. “But Nadab and Abihu didn’t take their work seriously. They didn’t make the offerings the way God had had told them, so God killed both of these brothers. The priests were supposed to be good examples of God’s holiness to all the people. God had to punish these young men who did not obey him.”[37]
The note in the New Explorer’s Study Bible on Ananias and Sapphira—presented as a news report from The Jerusalem Times, declares in its headline “They Dared to Lie to God.” While God’s agency in their deaths is again not explicitly stated, the report states, “Someone has said, ‘You can’t mock God.’ God demands truth, and lying to him is very dangerous.”[38] Here the impact of the text—that God is not mocked—is allowed to stand, even if divine agency is less than clear. Here the effect the act had on the apostolic church, that “great fear gripped the entire church,”[39] appears to be the intended effect of the annotation—a rare concurrence within children’s study bibles. Still, the text justifies God’s severe actions by illustrating the severe nature of the couple’s sin.
The Adventures in Odyssey Bible is the only one of the bibles to mention God’s supremacy with respect to Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Looking at the passage from Isaac’s perspective, the note explains that Isaac learned that God is more valuable even than people, stating, “Abraham didn’t want to hurt Isaac, but he wanted to obey God even more.”[40] Here human sinfulness in not the justification for God’s severity, but the excellence of God himself, the application question asking, “Do you love God more than anything else?”[41] Indeed, the Adventures in Odyssey Bible contains a series of notes titled “Amazing Events That Showed God’s Power,” a focus on God’s power rarely found among the other children’s bibles.[42] This bible alone among children’s bibles has a category for God’s severity that is not anthropocentric in its justification. God’s purpose in sending plagues on Egypt, for example, was not to teach the Egyptians (contra The New Explorer’s Bible), and it was not simply to redeem Israel, either. “But fist He wanted to show the Egyptians that He was the only true God. So He brought ten plagues on the land.... God is more powerful than anything.”[43]
PART II.
The Severity of God Further Considered
1. Making
Kids Okay: The Function of God’s Severity
Where God’s severity is engaged within these bibles, that severity serves the function of highlighting the redemptive purpose of suffering for the Christian. While none of these bibles identifies all suffering as divine punishment, all of them emphasize that when God punishes the believer, it is for his good, so that he can grow into Christ-likeness. The Kid’s Devotional Bible, in a note on Numbers 14:17-21, discusses God’s punishment of his people. Even when God forgives us, the note explains, God still punishes us so that we learn obedience. As with parental discipline, God’s goal is to “teach you right from wrong” and “help you become a better person.”[44] The introduction to 2 Kings states, “God will punish his people if they continue to disobey him.”[45] For 2 Chronicles, it reads, “In the end, God punished the people because they had disobeyed.”[46]
The New Explorers Bible occasionally confronts the severity of God directly. In the Foreword, Ruth Bell Graham writes that “kids ... find out what Bible characters often learned for themselves the hard way.”[47] This bible treats God’s curse of leprosy upon Miriam in this pedagogical manner. While God’s agency in the onset of the disease is not directly stated within the note, Aaron tells his young readers in an inset box that he and Miriam had been wrong to want to be leaders, and that their attitude had been bad. He continues, “So the Lord had to teach us a lesson. I though Miriam might die from the disease of leprosy, and for a while she was not allowed to live with the rest of us.” The application to his child readers follows, “So don’t try to be the most important person in your family or group. God chooses his own leaders in his own way.”[48] Here as in all the bibles reviewed, God’s chastisement of his people serves a redemptive purpose of teaching obedience, following a model of parental discipline.
2. Is God
Okay for Grownups? Uncertainty about God’s Severity
The general deemphasis upon God’s severity within evangelical children’s bibles reflects a larger deemphasis within the world of adult evangelicalism in America. James Davison Hunter observes how modern American evangelicals have embraced an “ethic of civility” that leads them not only to be tolerant of other’s views, but also to be tolerable to others.[49] Hunter continues by noting how such an ethic has effected a softening of evangelicalism’s religious style:
While their adoption of this ethic expresses itself politically, it expresses itself as a religious style as well. In this latter sense, it entails a deemphasis of Evangelicalism’s more offensive aspects, such as accusations of heresy, sin, immorality, and paganism, and themes of judgment, divine wrath, damnation, and hell. Anything that hints of moral or religious absolutism and intolerance is underplayed.[50]
Another recent study suggests this softening at a more local level. In All is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism, Marsha G. Witten analyzes the language of Protestant sermons, finding that in the great majority, “God is portrayed exclusively or predominantly in terms of the positive functions he serves for men and women.” She continues, “Chief among these functions is one that can be labeled ‘therapeutic.’ God relieves negative feelings, especially anxiety and doubt.” [51] While almost all sermons speak of God as a benevolent father, only 16 percent of sermons centrally concerned with God speak of God as also being a transcendent judge. And even those few sermons in Witten’s study that do speak of judgment never place emphasis upon that judgment; the theme is mentioned only in passing, and even then God’s agency in judgment is downplayed—sinners pass judgment on themselves, God only witnessing the fact. She writes:
The connection between God’s function as judge and a sinner’s punishment in hell is made only by implication. The language here suggests that God’s judgment is responsible for the reward of heaven, but human beings alone decide on their course to hell.[52]
Discussing the almost complete lack of fearsome qualities in the God of Protestant preaching, Witten observes:
“The transcendent, majestic, awesome God of Luther and Calvin—whose image informed early Protestant visions of the relationship between human beings and the divine—has undergone a softening of demeanor throughout the American experience of Protestantism, with only minor interruptions.”[53]
It appears that contemporary American evangelical children’s bibles are minimizing God’s severity precisely because contemporary American evangelicals are minimizing God’s severity.
But to what extent is this sheepishness about God’s harsher side characteristic of trends in the adult church, and to what extent is it a window into broader American assumptions about the innocence of children? While children elsewhere may live in a world of violence, sin and injustice—injustice which would make a God without severity seem to them unrealistic or downright wrong—Americans would seem to assume that violence is outside the world of children. While a quick perusal of children’s video games makes such an assumption seem infinitely naive, American children’s bibles appear to work on the assumption that violence within the biblical text—and especially violence at the hands of the Almighty—must be expunged, altered, avoided, or justified. Such divine violence cannot be allowed to stand in its own right.
Another assumption follows from this one, here relating to the psychological well being of children who have a vision for God’s severity. Any severity within a child’s impression of God’s character, the assumption goes, must be evidence of severe psychological damage to an innocent and impressionable youngster. This is clearly the case in one study of children’s drawings of God. Without demonstrating the case, the author of the study casually attributes any severity on God’s part as evidence of the child’s emotional instability and obviously violent upbringing.[54]
Such a study likely tells us more about American assumptions concerning the lives of children than it does about the effects upon children of encountering God’s severe side. This belief that a stern God implies an unhealthy child is generally lacking statistical verification. While research has tended to show some limited correlation between a child’s image of God and his or her parental upbringing,[55] research has shown little or no correlation between the child’s psychological well being and his or her picture of the deity.[56] Still, this area demands further investigation.
3. Further
Directions: Children’s Bibles in American Religion
A number of other areas beyond the scope of this paper also demand further investigation. Theological questions of grace and moralism arise within all the children’s bibles examined. The Christian message as presented within many notes borders on a practical Pelagianism, where the child is promised blessing upon condition of obedience. Biblical figures such as Abraham and David are more often viewed as heroes to emulate rather than as sinners who received grace. The Bible becomes a book about obeying God’s rules—among them the rule to come to Jesus for salvation. Fear, guilt, and shame arise as motivations for Christian faithfulness as frequently as does God’s grace. This moralistic hermeneutic begs for further study. Paul’s admonition was to consider God’s kindness as well![57]
And this investigation has been limited only to evangelical Protestant children’s bibles. Such bibles are certainly the most accessible, due in large part to the centrality of the bible within evangelical spirituality. Within the world of evangelical piety, the bible is to be read, meditated upon and memorized. It is where answers are hunted down and where divine assistance is sought. Its promises provide the hope for daily living. But are there non-evangelical Protestant annotated children’s bibles? And what of Roman Catholic children’s bibles? And even among evangelical children’s bibles, those for younger children deserve further treatment, as do children’s bible translations. And there remains a need for a solid history of children’s bibles—and of children’s piety in general.
But perhaps the question most deserving further investigation is why all but one of these evangelical children’s bibles have no interpretive category for the display of God’s severity except when viewed in relation to human guilt. Only the Adventures in Odyssey Bible provides a category for the display of God’s supremacy over his creatures; only it provides a possible theocentric understanding of the more difficult passages within the Christian canon.
Could it be that evangelicals, so used to grouping biblical teachings around four points of a gospel presentation[58] have lost the ability to apprehend God’s greatness in its own right? Has religion become a means toward a greater end of human salvation? Is there still room within American evangelical religion for the heavenly Potter—to use Paul’s language from Romans 9—to do whatever he wants with his clay without the need for justification? Or, rather, has the kindness of God become his controlling attribute, whereby aspects of God’s character in tension with this kindness—elements of God’s severity—must be chalked up exclusively to sinful humanity’s agency?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Adventures in Odyssey Study Bible, New King James Version. Nashville, TN:
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Heller,
David. The Children’s God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Hunter,
James Davison. Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Jubis,
Rolando. An Attachment-Theoretical Approach to Understanding Children’s
Conceptions of God. Dissertation, University of
Denver, 1991.
Kids Devotional Bible, New International Reader’s Version. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House, 1996.
Kid’s Study Bible, New International Reader’s Version. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan
Publishing House, 1998.
New Explorers Study Bible, New Living Translation. Nashville, TN: Thomas
Nelson, Inc.
Roberts,
Laura Anne. The Effect of Age and Sexual Abuse on the Concept of God in
Children Ages Six through Twelve. Dissertation, George Fox College, 1993.
Witten,
Marsha G. All is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.