As I’ve stated before, I’m a teenager and thus live with my parents. I also live with my sixteen month old nephew, who my parents have custody of. He obviously cannot read himself, and rarely enjoys being read to. We have a handful of children books still, and I try my hardest to read them to him. Well, with the exception of one.
My parents bought him “My First Read and Learn Bible“. I’m not going to talk about the usual ‘this is child abuse’ view on childhood indoctrination, but rather how absurd I think this all is in general and a few speculations I have in how religious parents make it easier to instill beliefs into their children.
The actual bible itself is full of atrocious content. I’d imagine many parents would like to shelter their kids from those things, and the book my parents have for my nephew is a perfect example. It leaves out all of the unwholesome parts, and puts a nice, shiny view on the bible. This is how “My First Read and Learn Bible” tells the creation story:
God made the earth and the sun. He made the moon and the stars.
God made all the animals and plants that live on earth.
He made man and woman.
God looked at all He had done. And it was very good!
That’s the end of it. It skips a lot of things, including the fall, Cain and Abel, and that boring part where it talks about the family line from Adam to Noah. It doesn’t tell you that god made light before he made the sun, or that he made plants after light but before the sun so that you are left wondering if that light would drive photosynthesis or if the plants sat idle for a day waiting for the sun. On the next page, it jumps right into Noah and the story of the flood:
Noah was a good man. God told Noah to build a big boat.
He told Noah to get two of every kind of animal on the earth. The boat was big enough to hold them all.
A storm came. It rained for forty days and forty nights. The earth was flooded.
When the storm stopped, Noah sent a dove to find dry land.
The boat landed on top of a mountain. All the water was gone! A rainbow appeared in the sky. It was a sign from God.
Noah’s family and the animals left the boat. God had saved them from the flood.
After that, the book goes to Moses. But notice that it doesn’t say why god flooded the Earth. We can’t have kids knowing that god didn’t like humans! And surely, they would question the claim that god is all-loving when he kills everyone by means of drowning them. He could have at least done it in a more humane way, right? We definitely can’t have children wondering about those things.
I’m going to stop quoting the book. It goes on to tell that Moses’ mother put him in a basket in the river, the king’s daughter found him, he grew up to be a strong shepherd, and that god spoke to him. It says that god told Moses the king was cruel, explains that Moses’ people were slaves, then says Moses lead his people out of the desert.
Wait a second. It doesn’t talk about how god hardened Pharaoh’s heart. I suppose children would want to know why god did such a thing, because what if Pharaoh would have let the people go before god made him mean? It also fails to mention all the plagues god sent because he hardened Pharaoh’s heart to where he wouldn’t let Moses’ people go. Again, god is all-loving and we just can’t tell these innocent kids that he killed all of the first borns! No, god is a hero, and the book makes that clear by telling the little ones that god parted a sea so everyone could escape the king they didn’t know had his heart hardened by god.
The other sections of the book are: David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lions, Jesus is Born, The Shepherds and the Wise Men, Jesus Does God’s Work, and finally, Jesus and the Little Children. Yeah, the book ends talking about how Jesus loved all the little kids. Along the way, it fails to mention some wars, god telling people to kill many others and rip open their pregnant women, the parts about women being inferior, and what is supposed to be a very important part: the crucifixion.
Parents must not want to tell their children just yet about how god killed his son, who was really himself, because we’re all so freaking hopeless. I mean, I can see why that part isn’t in there, because the fall is not either. If they explained the crucifixion, they’d have to explain the fall as well, and that most certainly could not go smoothly.
“Mommy, daddy, I don’t get it! If eating that fruit would tell Adam and Eve what’s good and what’s bad, why weren’t they allowed to? You always say, ‘you know the difference between right and wrong!’ like it’s something that we really should know! And if god is everyone’s parent, then he should want that even more… right?”
“Wait, that sounds wrong. Eating that means they learn right from wrong. So, before eating, they wouldn’t know. If god made them so they didn’t know good from bad, how can he expect them to use a skill he didn’t give them to know they shouldn’t do something?”
I would imagine the crucifixion would also bring up unwanted questions.
“Why did god have to kill Jesus? Couldn’t he have put us all in time out? If one of you did that to me, Child Protective Services would put you in prison!”
“I thought god was all-loving, though…”
“If god can do anything, why couldn’t he just get rid of sin entirely? We would still be able to do what we wanted, except the bad things. Like, god didn’t make us to get from here to school really fast, but he made us so we could have cars. We still have a choice there.”
But the writer of this book, and the parents who buy it and teach it to their children, cleverly bypass all these things. I remember when I was in elementary school, I had a children’s bible. It didn’t leave out as much as my nephew’s does, but did make everything seem nice. I never wondered why the crucifixion would be seen as disgusting, because the book assured me that god did it because he loved me, and it made it seem like there were no other options. But notice that mine did include some of these things that the “My First Read and Learn Bible” does not. That is because it was given to me as an elementary student and not a toddler. If I could remember what I was taught back then, I’m sure it would match the teachings of my nephew’s book.
What I’m trying to say here is that I think kids are slowly eased into Christianity. They start by only telling them the good things, then it sugar-coats the questionable, until you are old enough (and already think it is true) and are told that god killed people in that flood, and Jesus had to die because god wouldn’t let us live with him forever unless our nature, which he created and finds despicable, is covered up by blood.
I think that all this says a lot about the religion. It is too extreme for one to just jump right into, and instead many are slowly eased into things.
