Dulled to the Literal?
A friend of mine with considerable teaching gifts says her only hesitation in teaching the Bible to children is that she isn't comfortable with crafts. Nevertheless, a couple of years ago her second-grade son showed me a pillow he painted in church on Wednesday night. It was covered in a print of puppy feet. Inspired to go for the avuncular, I asked him, did they have to dip the whole dog in paint, or just the feet? I expected a roll of the eyes, or a charitable laugh. What I got was a look of focused concentration as he tried to figure out an earnest answer to my question. His mom had to let him off the hook with the revelation that this grown-up was kidding.
I don't repent of attempts at humor, however abstruse they may be. I don't repent of figurative language, as all too often the word choices by which we would convey Truth or build relationships are thoughtlessly unoriginal. A timely word is often well thought out to break through the dullness of conventional, nearly meaningless exchanges. What this encounter has me wondering about two years later is why we choose the language we do, and whether we are aware of the sobering accountability are word choices involve. Those who follow after us formally or informally, especially children, are wired to take what we say seriously and often literally. Only experience teaches them that we are sometimes kidding, and too often the distance between what we mean and what we say is the norm more for hypocrisy than humor.
Jesus guards the hearts of humble followers, and the sanctity of our utterances. He says in Luke 17:2 that it would be better for those who mislead children to have a stone tied around their necks and to be thrown into the sea. This warning is especially sobering given the carryover context from the parable at the end of Luke 16. There, Jesus points out how easily we as adults can get use to hearing Moses and the prophets, or by extension any of God's Word, and fail to take its convicting power seriously. If we don't, if we use that Word flippantly just as we use other words with little thought to meaning and implications, how can we expect those under our influence to do differently. John Stuart Mill was right. Christians generation after generation tend to carry out not the faith printed in the Bible, but only one to the limits they see in their immediate forbearers. Will the extent to which we live by the Word and mean what we say bring fresh inspiration and conviction, or will we be another filter, another lesson to the little ones to look for the figurative rather than the transformative?
I don't repent of attempts at humor, however abstruse they may be. I don't repent of figurative language, as all too often the word choices by which we would convey Truth or build relationships are thoughtlessly unoriginal. A timely word is often well thought out to break through the dullness of conventional, nearly meaningless exchanges. What this encounter has me wondering about two years later is why we choose the language we do, and whether we are aware of the sobering accountability are word choices involve. Those who follow after us formally or informally, especially children, are wired to take what we say seriously and often literally. Only experience teaches them that we are sometimes kidding, and too often the distance between what we mean and what we say is the norm more for hypocrisy than humor.
Jesus guards the hearts of humble followers, and the sanctity of our utterances. He says in Luke 17:2 that it would be better for those who mislead children to have a stone tied around their necks and to be thrown into the sea. This warning is especially sobering given the carryover context from the parable at the end of Luke 16. There, Jesus points out how easily we as adults can get use to hearing Moses and the prophets, or by extension any of God's Word, and fail to take its convicting power seriously. If we don't, if we use that Word flippantly just as we use other words with little thought to meaning and implications, how can we expect those under our influence to do differently. John Stuart Mill was right. Christians generation after generation tend to carry out not the faith printed in the Bible, but only one to the limits they see in their immediate forbearers. Will the extent to which we live by the Word and mean what we say bring fresh inspiration and conviction, or will we be another filter, another lesson to the little ones to look for the figurative rather than the transformative?
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