Religious Education in the Family Part 11

For a short practical list see the different lists cla.s.sified under Sunday-School Departments in W.S. Athearn, _The Church School_, particularly pp. 54, 83, 118, 169. Pilgrim Press, $1.00.

IV. Topics for Discussion

1. Do you remember any stories which especially impressed you as a child? What were their qualities? What were the qualities of their narration?

2. What are your difficulties in story-telling to children?

3. Is the habit of reading books pa.s.sing among children? If so, what are the reasons?

4. What responsibility has the public library toward the child's selection of books? toward promoting book reading?

5. How many families co-operate with the library?

6. How might the church co-operate?

7. Does the reading of newspapers by children affect their general habits of reading? In what ways?

8. What personal difference is there, if any, between the effect of a borrowed book and of one the child owns?

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Laura E. Cragin, _Kindergarten Bible Stories_. Fifty-six of the Old Testament stories. There is also a companion volume of New Testament stories.

James Baldwin, _Old Stories of the East_. Fresh and interesting versions of the familiar Old Testament stories.

Kate Douglas Wiggin, _The Story Hour_. Good stories and a suggestive introduction on story-telling.

_Half a Hundred Stories for the Little People_, by various authors.

[18] _A List of Good Stories to Tell to Children under Twelve Years of Age_, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, $0.05. There are references to books in which the stories may be found, including 25 Bible stories, 16 fables, 14 myths, 14 Christmas stories, 7 Thanksgiving stories, etc.

[19] Such as O'Shea, _Old World Wonder Stories_; George Hodges, _The Garden of Eden_; Cragin, _Old Testament Stories_; Mary Stewart, _Tell Me a True Story_.

[20] The H.W. Wilson Co., White Plains, New York, publishes a list of _Children's Books for Sunday-School Libraries_.

CHAPTER XI

THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN THE HOME

If we keep clearly in mind the aim of religious education in the family as that of the development of the lives of religious persons, the place and value of the Bible will be evident. It will be used as a means of developing and directing lives. This will be quite different from a perfunctory use because our fathers used it or a use under the compulsion of the fear lest some strange evil should befall us, some visitation of an offended deity.

-- 1. THE CHILD'S NEED

Children need the Bible as a part of their social heritage. Just as they get a larger life, inspired and stimulated by the realization of their connection with the past of their family and their country, so the Bible brings them into connection with the religious history of the race.

General history brings heroic forefathers into the stream of consciousness; we feel the push of their lives. So the Bible reveals the stream farther back and makes us part of the process of life in unity with great characters and great movements.

The child has a right to the Bible as his literary heritage. Here in the Bible is the precipitation of the ideals of a people unique in the place which religion held in their lives. Here is a literature which is the source of much of the best in the language and reading of the child's life. Its phrases are beautiful and convenient embodiments of religious ideals; they will have a steadily developing richness of meaning as life opens out to the child.[21]

-- 2. DIFFICULTIES

The difficulties in the way of the use of the Bible in the home are: the crowded programs, or a lack of time due to the absence of any program for the days; a feeling of unnaturalness in the special reading of this book; the decay of the custom of reading aloud; parental ignorance of the Bible and especially of its beauties for the young; and the excessive amount of task-reading frequently required by the schools. The Sunday school also sometimes offends in this respect by overemphasis on academic tasks for home work.

-- 3. METHODS

First, let parents use the Bible themselves. Use the books as you wish children to use them. This will be the longest step you can take toward the solution of the problem.

Secondly, use the Bible naturally. When children have an aversion to the Bible it is due usually to two causes: the peculiar place and use of the book which makes it a thing apart from life, and often an object of dread; and the practice of using it as a task-book, to be opened only in order to prepare Sunday-school lessons. Just as it takes years to overcome the aversion set up against English literature by its a.n.a.lytical study in the schools, so that the child becomes a man before he voluntarily reads d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, the poets, and essayists, in the same manner we have succeeded in making the Bible undesirable to youth. If you read pa.s.sages aloud, use the tone of voice which would be appropriate if this was a new book not bound in leather. Read it for pleasure as one would read a literary masterpiece--not because opinion might frown on you if you had not read the cla.s.sic. Does someone object that that would be to degrade the Bible to the level of secular writings? You cannot degrade a literature; it makes its own level and our labels do not affect it. Certain it is that a pious tone of voice will not protect the Bible from the secular level. But to use it unnaturally will degrade it in the opinion of those who hear us.

Thirdly, make its use a pleasure. All children enjoy story-telling and listening to reading. Many parents practice the children's hour, some period in the day when they will, alone with the children, read and talk with them. Let the Bible story be the reward of a good day, something promised as an incentive to good behavior. Children delight, not alone in the story itself, but in rhythmic pa.s.sages, in the poetic flights of Isaiah and the beautiful imagery of the Psalms. To them it is natural and pleasant to think of the hills that skipped and the stars that sang and the trees that gave forth praise. They know the song of nature and are happy to find it put into words.

Fourthly, use the Bible as a book of life. How many times a day do questions of conduct arise in the family! How often do children ask what is right, and freely discuss the question! Here is a book rich in precept and example on at least many of the questions. There are pictures of actual lives meeting real temptations; there are the epigrammatic precepts of Proverbs and of the teachings of Jesus. Call attention to them, not as settling the question out of hand, but as testimony to the point. Accustom children to getting the light of the Bible on their lives, remembering that this book is a light and not a fence nor a code of laws.

Fifthly, use the Bible in wors.h.i.+p. This does not conflict with the plea for its use naturally, for wors.h.i.+p should be as natural as any of the social pleasures of the family. Here select those pa.s.sages for reading which count most for the spirit of wors.h.i.+p. It is a good plan to read a short pa.s.sage, suitable for memorizing, so frequently that children learn it and are able to repeat it in concert. Be sure that all the pa.s.sages read or recited are short. It will often be wise to preface the reading with a brief account of its original circ.u.mstances, so that all may hear the words as the actual utterances of a real man living in real life.

Sixthly, provide material which helps to make the Bible interesting, and which helps children to see its pictures through the eyes of geography and history.[22]

Seventhly, make the use of the Bible possible at all times for all. See that as soon as the child can read he has his own Bible, that it is in large, readable type, as much like any other book as possible. It is no evidence of grace to ruin the eyes over diamond-text Bibles. If possible, also provide separate books of the Bible, in modern literary form and some in the idiom of our day.[23]

-- 4. DOUBTFUL METHODS

It is doubtful whether good comes from the use of the Bible as a riddle-book, nor do the "Bible games" tend to develop a natural appreciation of the book. There is no new light but rather a confusing shadow thrown on the character of Joseph by the foolish conundrum concerning Pharaoh making a ruler out of him. Sending a child to the Bible to discover the shortest verse, the longest, the middle one, etc., trains him to regard it as an odd kind of book, to think of it as a dictionary, and to use it less.

We a.s.sume too readily that a knowledge of the separate details of biblical information, such as the date of the Flood, the age of Methuselah, the names of the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, the books of the two Testaments, is the desired end. But one might know all these things and many more and be not one whit the better. For the child surely the desirable end is that he may feel deeply the attractiveness of the character of Joseph or of Jesus, may say within himself, "What a fine man; I want to be like him." Be sure the persons are real, that you see them living their lives in their times, just as you live your life now.

I. References for Study

T.G. Soares, "Making the Bible Real to Boys," in _Boy Training_, pp. 117-40. a.s.sociation Press, $0.75.

W.T. Lhamon, "Bible in the Home," _Religious Education_, December, 1912, p. 486.

G. Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. x. Appleton, $1.50.

II. Further Reading

_The Bible in Practical Life._ Religious Education a.s.sociation.

Numerous references to the use of the Bible in the home in this volume.