Mere Comments has a post about an easter preschool curriculum that purposefully fails to mention Jesus' death and resurrection, which seems to me to kinda be the point of the holiday...
We didn't know that the Gospel, like Ginsu knives and blood pressure medicine, ought to be kept out of the reach of small children.At least that's what one church was told recently, by a publisher of children's Sunday school curricula, according to Two Institutions, a blog about family and church matters.
The pastors at this church in Raleigh, North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday school lessons for preschoolers from "First Look," the publisher of the one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn't a mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight.
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"Easter is a special time in churches," the letter from the publisher says. "It's a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we need to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter."
The letter continues:
"In order to be sensitive to the physical, intellectual, and emotional development of preschoolers, First Look has chosen not to include the Easter story in our curriculum. Instead, we are focusing on the Last Supper, when Jesus shared a meal and spent time with the people He loved. We have made this choice because the crucifixion is simply too violent for preschoolers. And if we were to skip the crucifixion and go straight to the resurrection, then preschoolers would be confused."
The curriculum marketers must know how bad this sounds, so they reassure the church they believe that the Gospel is for all people. Leaving out the cross and the resurrection is actually to help children come to Christ. They write, "We're using these formative preschool years to build a foundation for that eventual decision by focusing on God's love and telling preschoolers that 'Jesus wants to be my friend forever.'"
The publishers note that there is an "alternate ending" to the kindergarten lesson that "tells a simple version of the Easter story" for older preschoolers, for those churches that want it. What kind of evangelical world do we find ourselves in when the Easter story is an "alternate ending" to the story of Jesus, at Eastertime?
Here's the original blog post.
Now, I am not a father, and frankly the thought of teaching a preschool Sunday school class is paralyzing to me, so I'm not going to run my mouth off much more concerning this story. I will say that I cannot recall ever being frightened about anything I heard at church (well, at least not until I started listening during "big church").
Any parents care to chime in? For those without children, do you think that hearing about the truth of Jesus' death and resurrection at that age would have (or did) adversely affected you? Other thoughts?
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Comments (23)
I don't recall ever being afraid of the "Easter" story. Not once ever. I never recall any friends being scared either. How the heck can you have a Gospel without a resurrection? You can't! What good news is there? Some guy claimed to be God, walked around, said nice things, and then went back to heaven? No, the difference between our God an any other god out there is that ours came as a man, suffered horribly as a man, died as a man, and was resurrected into glory.
Christianity is a bloody religion. We're saved by The Blood and covered by The Blood. And we take great comfort in The Blood.
This is just...idiotic.
http://exploringourmatrix.blog...
I definitely agree. But (there's always a but) isn't the death and resurrection of Christ a fairly foundational concept to the bible? Should we really wait until children reach a particular cognitive ability to introduce the event that the Christian faith arguably hinges on? Not rhetorical questions, I'm really wondering.
Again, I don't have children so my opinions are probably moot.
(btw: I really enjoy reading exploring our matrix)
I think we forget how different our modern American culture is from the ancient near eastern culture in which all the Bible stories took place. Children in those days were not shielded from birth, life, death and dying, as our more Disneyfied children are today. It was all a natural and normal part of life from infancy and up (long before there was such as thing as "pre-school"). In a shepherding culture, everyone, little kids included, pretty much witnessed regularly the entire cycle of life, from procreation, to birth, to breeding, and to slaughter. The idea that Jewish parents would somehow try to shield their small children from the details of Jesus' death and resurrection is just, well, silly. Their children knew what happened to lambs, and they could easily understand what happened to the Lamb of God. Sacrifice and blood were part of the Passover story they rehearsed every year as a Jewish family. It should still be for us as Christian families today, only now we know that Jesus is the true Passover Lamb, who bled and died for our sins.
First off, I find it disturbing that a publisher would consider this kind of decision - leave it to the teachers to decide how to handle it!
Second, I think kids from 4-6 can handle the truth about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. I agree with Christian M. above about these things being a normal part of life - why do we try to present a sanitized reality to kids? Do we think it will make things easier when a loved one dies, or when hard times arrive and they lose their home? Why not properly equip them to navigate these questions?
My wife is a play therapist (child counselor). Her grief & loss studies showed the value of being straightforward with children about death, for example: they tended to heal faster and show less long-term effects.
Now, I'm not going to go show the Passion of the Christ to my kids, either. It's our role as teachers and parents to help guide these kids through these issues. Some of the very best faith lessons I've had to give were to my own kids who asked penetrating questions about life, death, heaven, and suffering. The world is a hard place: let's give it to our kids straight, with love - they'll thank you for it someday.
www.twoinstitutions.org broke this story and is an incredible blog I read everyday.
it is a puzzle to figure out how to explain the Good Friday message to my children. they've heard it, forgotten it, heard it again and still cannot truly comprehend what has happened.
but to get back to point - no, i do not believe that children are aversely affected by the entire history of holy week.
but i feel that its okay to focus on different things each year - like this year we are bringing about the importance of Obedience - "take this cup away from me... not my will but yours be done..."
When we hear a preacher just preaches God's Love only (i.e. without ever mentioning the other side of God's character - Justice and Righteous), we will say that this preacher will mislead the congregation.
What about when a preacher someday, due to a nowadays social events, says that, resurrection is illogical and unscientific and unreliable, therefore, we should not mention the resurrection anymore ...
What about also one day the preacher says that, let us forget about the Bible or Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life. These will offend other people, we should keep the teaching of 'LOVING' toward others ...
Familiar to these kind of stuff?
Either we are for the LORD or we are against the LORD .. for there is no other way ...