Over the last weekend, the children's choir at our church was given a lesson with some kind of helpful, moral point. To use a negative illustration, the teacher used David. The focus of the story about David was his relationship with Bathsheba.
On the way home, after singing during 3 Sunday morning services, I debriefed with Anjali about the story told about David. The presenter/teacher was probably 23 years old, and his audience was somewhere between 5 and 11 years old. This was one of the reasons that he told the story why he did. But understand this, David did not fall in love with Bathsheba when he committed adultery. This is what is called "lust". He wanted to share privacy parts (a term our family uses). He was the king and he would not be denied. Had very little to do with love.
David was very sorry for what he had done. Well, lets see. Probably took 45 days or more to determine that Bathsheba was pregnant. He tried to get Uriah back home to sleep with her. That didn't work, so David hatched the plan to kill him. All these attempts to keep away from the blame took more time. It wasn't until Nathan confronted him that he owned up and showed sorrow for what he had done. Sure, he was sorry, but make no mistake, he first went to great lengths to cover it up.
The baby died as a result of David's sin because God wanted to punish David. While this is actually in the text, the one who actually got hurt the most was, of course, the baby. No mention of the baby.
What do we do when Bible stories are told and they don't match the Bible? Even if the teacher's lesson is a good one, I'm going to encourage Anjali and Mark to rely on the text as much as possible.
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And what tough stories these are, too. So the baby dies because of the dad's lust? That doesn't always happen and how horribly unfair. And yeah- the guy was a schmo- forcing himself on a married woman, manipulating an underling, then betraying him to death. I can see why they go for the G version. But of all the people in the world, children are the most vulnerable and they know it. I believe they do understand good and evil in their guts at a much deeper level and although I wouldn't want to scare them on purpose I do think we owe them the truth which is scary.
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