Noah's Ark
I recently told my Sunday School class the story of Cain and Abel - how both brothers offered sacrifices to God, yet God was only pleased with Abel's, which enraged Cain so much that he took Abel for a walk in the fields and promptly killed him.
Later that week I had a phone call from a concerned parent. He had noticed that we were going to look at Noah's Ark the following Sunday and wanted to know what my approach would be. I was confused. Did he mean, would I take a literal reading of the text? Some people are really into the feasibility of a boat that big, with that many occupants, being self-sufficient for that many days
'No, no,' replied my parent. 'It's just that my daughter was pretty upset by the story of Cain killing Abel and I was wondering how you're going to talk about global destruction.'
Ah. That.
This lead to some musings, and some interesting conversations about telling the stories of the Old Testament to children. Suffice to say, the tales of the Good Book have some disturbing elements. The prelude to Moses in the bulrushes, after all, is a policy of infanticide. Do you just skip that part? Do you take out all the violence? Does that ruin the narrative? After all, who doesn't love the part where the feisty and inventive Jael kills the enemy leader by hammering a tent peg through his skull?
Bearing this in mind, my rendition of Noah and his ark may have glossed over the fate of those not on board. Instead, I had the children build a boat from cushions, get inside, and try to imagine what it may have been like on the ark. What kind of animals would there have been? What was the ark itself like?
'Well, there are no windows,' was the confident reply from one boy, who was new to the class.
'Really?' I had no idea if that was the case or not.
'Oh no,' said my student. 'God specifically told Noah not to put windows in the ark, so that he wouldn't look out and see all the people outside dying.'
Right. That actually kind of made sense. But it wasn't very child friendly.
Moving right along. We got off our ark and we talked about rainbows, and the promise of God to never, ever flood the whole world ever again.
'That's right,' agreed my outspoken friend. 'Now he just floods them country by country.'
So true. So ... not what I was going for.
Later that week I had a phone call from a concerned parent. He had noticed that we were going to look at Noah's Ark the following Sunday and wanted to know what my approach would be. I was confused. Did he mean, would I take a literal reading of the text? Some people are really into the feasibility of a boat that big, with that many occupants, being self-sufficient for that many days
'No, no,' replied my parent. 'It's just that my daughter was pretty upset by the story of Cain killing Abel and I was wondering how you're going to talk about global destruction.'
Ah. That.
This lead to some musings, and some interesting conversations about telling the stories of the Old Testament to children. Suffice to say, the tales of the Good Book have some disturbing elements. The prelude to Moses in the bulrushes, after all, is a policy of infanticide. Do you just skip that part? Do you take out all the violence? Does that ruin the narrative? After all, who doesn't love the part where the feisty and inventive Jael kills the enemy leader by hammering a tent peg through his skull?
Bearing this in mind, my rendition of Noah and his ark may have glossed over the fate of those not on board. Instead, I had the children build a boat from cushions, get inside, and try to imagine what it may have been like on the ark. What kind of animals would there have been? What was the ark itself like?
'Well, there are no windows,' was the confident reply from one boy, who was new to the class.
'Really?' I had no idea if that was the case or not.
'Oh no,' said my student. 'God specifically told Noah not to put windows in the ark, so that he wouldn't look out and see all the people outside dying.'
Right. That actually kind of made sense. But it wasn't very child friendly.
Moving right along. We got off our ark and we talked about rainbows, and the promise of God to never, ever flood the whole world ever again.
'That's right,' agreed my outspoken friend. 'Now he just floods them country by country.'
So true. So ... not what I was going for.