We sit in a circle of sunlight on the rug, with my son Kasher on my lap and my other son Aiden beside me. We open the children’s Bible, we choose a story. They always like the exciting ones. The stories about Noah and the ark, about David and Goliath, about three men being thrown in a fiery furnace. They also like the one about Jesus dying for our sins and rising again — which is, in itself, the heart of the gospel.
But as I read these stories, I reflect on what’s missing in children’s Bibles. They don’t mention how the waters rose up over nursing mothers. Or how God drowned children in the flood. They don’t talk about the fact that Jesus told us to leave our fathers and mothers and our loved ones and follow Him. Or how we’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re living the gospel if we aren’t visiting those in prison or opening up our homes to the homeless or feeding the hungry or giving water to the thirsty.
No, children’s Bibles leave out a lot. But as my boys go to bed they say, “Mommy — we need to help those kids, the ones without food or water or beds or homes, right?”
“Yes, we do,” I say. “Jesus says if we love Him we’ll help His people.”
And if I forget to pray for those kids, even one night, Aiden reminds me. Because the thing about children is, they are pure in heart. And they recognize — and despise — hypocrisy.
As we get older, we continue to censor the Bible; we pick and choose what to focus on. Because we cannot make sense of the truth, of the reality that a good God would do hard things. How He would allow suffering and pain and horror.
Which Gospel do You Believe In?
A couple of weeks ago I felt the hurt that God feels and how he loves places like Uganda and Rwanda, the Sudan, Syria — countries pulsing with sorrow.
He cares. I know He cares.
We have to decide though.
We have to decide if we really believe in God, or if we’re just clinging to the G-rated version of Jesus. The Sunday School edition, the photoshopped Saviour. Because it’s safer that way.
This version of the gospel lets us stay in our nice homes with our nice jobs with our big TVs and our hummers.
Unless we accept the R-rated, unedited version of the gospel, unless we accept that we don’t know everything, we might just miss the point.
A Joy Rooted in Heaven
It has been a month now since I’ve come home from Africa, and I can’t shake the feeling that the truest Christians I’ve ever met live on a continent that is starving to death. The joy — oh, the exuberant joy that leapt off their faces. The children who ran barefoot in the slums, along streams filled with garbage; the women who hugged my white skin tight, whose eyes lit up with love for this rich foreigner.
I didn’t understand it.
“You should be angry at me!” I wanted to yell. “Why do you love me? I come from a place that has everything, and here you struggle to feed your babies. Why do you love me?”
They’ve faced suffering. They’ve walked through the fire. They have no choice but to acknowledge the hard reality, that this life will be difficult, that our circumstances do not determine the character of a good God.
Their joy is not rooted in earth. Their joy is rooted in heaven — in the reality of a God who is bigger than this temporary existence.
God’s Goodness is Immeasurable
After I got home, I told my friend about these men, women and children, about how they still cry, “Praise God! He is so good to me,” after losing their families to the genocide.
“But what reason do they have to think God is good?” my friend said, who has gone to church her whole life.
God’s goodness is not measurable. It is a fact. It is not weakened by suffering or strengthened by blessing. It is a spiritual characteristic that these people have learned to trust no matter what happens in their physical life.
Are we ready to close the children’s Bible and open up the grown-up, hard translation of Scripture? The kind that, if we wade through the difficult stuff — the hard stories — will reveal to us an awe-inspiring God who is longing to make himself known?
Because while we fool ourselves, children are dying from hunger, wars are waging, and marriages are collapsing. And they’re waiting for the Church to rise up and start living like Jesus.
