The Just Love Story Bible

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Ooh. [00:00:00] Speaker B: And a hush fell over the crowd. Good morning, everyone. It is so good to see you all on this chilly Sunday morning. We are so excited to continue in the Sing of a Savior Words that Prepare the Way series this morning with Shannon Daley Harris. So, Shannon is the associate dean at Auburn Seminary and a longtime leader in children's faith formation who grew up here at Nassau church. She spent 30 years guiding the Children's Defense Fund partnership with faith communities and has written extensive extensively on nurturing justice, spirituality and empathy in families, including hope for the Future, answering God's call to justice for our children. Today, she's going to be talking a bit about the Just Love Story Bible, which is available for sale in the back of the room. I've already said I completely blanked on bringing cash or check today, but I'm getting one for my nieces. So before we turn things over to Shannon, please join me in a word of prayer. [00:00:56] Speaker B: God, we are grateful for the stories that form us, and especially the stories that form us as children, the things that we can come back to again and again that remind us of your love and the way that imagination can spark an even deeper faith. God, we pray this morning that you would give us the eyes and ears of children to hear with wonder what you have for us this morning. In your name we pray. Amen. [00:01:26] Speaker C: So again, we'll start with the first one of the stories from this Just Love Story Bible, and then I'll back up and tell you a little bit about how it came to be and what our hopes and values were in the writing of it. But. So the story. I'm just a kid. About Jeremiah. Jeremiah was just like any other kid. Whether they were running races, making each other laugh, or just talking, he. He felt the same as his friends. Until the day that changed everything. Jeremiah was sure God was telling him something. I mean, he knew God doesn't have a mouth and voice like people do. The only way Jeremiah could explain it later was to say God's word came to me. He was shocked, but certain that this was what God told him. Jeremiah, before you were even born, I chose you to bring my message to the people. Jeremiah gulped. He wished he could disappear. He, a teenager, bring God's message to adults who were older than him. What if they wouldn't listen? What if they laughed? Or worse, got mad? No way. This did not sound like a job for him. There must be a way to convince God that he was not the right person for this assignment. I'm not very good at speaking. Jeremiah insisted God's response wasn't what Jeremiah hoped. Jeremiah, I'll tell you what to say. That didn't work. I'm only a teenager. Jeremiah protested. Surely that would get him out of it. Nope. Don't say I'm only a teenager, Jeremiah. Jeremiah's stomach felt queasy, and he must have looked scared because he felt God's reassurance. Don't be afraid of the people. I'll be with you. I'll keep you safe. Jeremiah couldn't think of anything else to say to get out of this. Maybe he just needed to trust God, that he could do it. And that's what Jeremiah did. Sometime later, Jeremiah stood in the temple doorway as people came to worship. God wants us to act justly with each other, to take care of children and outsiders and people without money, to be peaceful and faithful. Jeremiah proclaimed, God cares more about how we live than how we worship. [00:03:42] Speaker C: Again and again, year after year, Jeremiah spoke God's messages to the people. [00:03:49] Speaker C: Sometimes the people didn't listen to him. Sometimes they laughed, and yes, sometimes they got mad. Jeremiah got frustrated and sad and scared at times. Even so, God was right about Jeremiah. Jeremiah spoke the truth about God's love and justice from when he was a kid until he was an old person and God was with him the whole time. [00:04:21] Speaker C: Get this to move. There we go. So the story behind the Just Love Storybook Bible, how did this come to be? Well, of course, as most things do, it all started with mom, who, when she was pastor in Trenton, she came to the seminary campus when they were sort of matching field ed students and pastors. And mom, of course, having been the field ed student with Katie Billman, got to return the favor of being an awesome pastor and picked Jackie Lewis, then a seminarian. And so Jackie, who is the co author of the Just Love Story Bible now, back then was Mom's field ed student. Learned about ministry and storytelling and children's sermons and all that goes into ministry the way mom does better than just about anybody. And they forged a lifelong friendship. And so Jackie's been part of the family since way back then. Came to Mother's Day celebration because Mom's like a second mother to her. And at this Mother's day celebration in 2021, Jackie came over to me and she said so. And I had just finished about 31 years with the Children's Defense Fund and was doing some writing projects. And Jackie came to me and said, I've gotten this email from an editor at Beaming Books, which is the publishing arm of the Lutheran Children's publishing arm of the Lutheran Press. And they're interested in some sort of story Bible that they described as a revolutionary love theme or liberation theology. They just knew they wanted some sort of story bible that focused on justice and love. And she said, would you be interested in collaborating with me on it? And of course, course, I jumped at it on the idea. And so Jackie sort of loosed me to work with the publisher developing this proposal. [00:06:09] Speaker C: So we were sort of off and running. This was in the spring of. [00:06:15] Speaker C: 2021. It came out this past September, so a fairly long. [00:06:21] Speaker C: Development. So we spent about a year developing the proposal for the Just Love Story Bible. And one of the first things we were doing is just really being clear about what's the frame, what's our lens that we are that's going to guide our story selection. And you basically could just look at our new chancel and know, okay, so that's the frame. Like how we sort of knew the stories that we were going to include. Or. And in fact, Middle Church's tagline has been Just Love, which I suggested then become the title of the story Bible. We knew we wanted to do 52 stories that would lend itself to kind of, if it was used in churches, that they could do a story a week. [00:07:05] Speaker C: But also we're really thinking about kind of use at home. The publisher's imagination was that this would be something that adults would be reading with their kiddos at home. [00:07:18] Speaker C: So beyond knowing that justice and love were going to be sort of guiding our story selection. And 26 stories from the Old Testament, 26 from the New Testament, got to write the Old Testament ones. Jackie wrote all of the New Testament ones. What was the sort of frame or lens that went into our thinking beyond. We want to select stories that tell that big message of God's love and justice. And the thing we just kept coming back to is we really wanted them to have a trustworthy theology. Nothing in the story Bible that would later need to be untaught. Not a story that says suggests that Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale. This human being lived inside the whale for three days and then emerged whole. That if we as adults know that that's not sort of a factual story, but as a story that's created to tell us something true about God, then we can trust that children can develop that understanding as well. So there's not that moment of like, wait a minute, you told me. I thought. And creating that kind of cognitive dissonance when they're young or doubt or wondering, like, well, what else can I trust? Because you made it seem one way. And then later I learn that you as adults have this much richer, nuanced, contextualized understanding of these Bible stories. So really wanted a trustworthy theology, nothing that would need to be untaught. Taking seriously children's capacity to think theologically, to wonder, imagine, ask important questions and bring their own curiosity and insight to these Bible stories. Trusting children with context and depth. And again, not waiting till we think they're quote, unquote, old enough for what makes biblical stories meaningful to us. And again, when you think about how what's so meaningful to us about biblical stories aren't just the surface meanings, but that we hear the word proclaimed and we have the study that gives us all of the nuance and layers and depth of meaning, and so not depriving children of that same opportunity to have some contextualization that gives those stories more depth and meaning from the start. [00:09:14] Speaker C: And then really wanting the just love story Bible to have a theology that children could grow into and grow with, but not outgrow. And so again, some parts of it for the younger children won't necessarily register or make sense in the first reading, but wanted it to be a book that could really grow with them, but that they wouldn't outgrow. And again, look back and say, you know, we as older children or teens or adults don't believe that like that really wanting it to have. [00:09:46] Speaker C: A trustworthy theology that they wouldn't outgrow. [00:09:51] Speaker C: A couple of sort of again, thinking about. [00:09:55] Speaker C: Some of the guiding values. Lisa Miller, in her book the Spiritual Child, talks about the fact that spiritual facilities inborn and children. We're not planting spirituality into our children, but we're really accompanying and nurturing it in them and helping them develop that innate spirituality that every human being is born with. And you know, she wrote, as a child grows, that natural spirituality integrates with other capacities of cognitive and social and emotional and moral development as well as physical change. So absolutely, our all of our I mean, our whole lives are developing out our inborn, innate spirituality, but recognizing that children arrive with their own sense of wonder and connection to what's above and beyond us. And then just because by Dan Migliore, a longtime member of the church and of course, Princeton Theological Seminary professor, his book Faith Seeking Understanding is also I realized how much it has informed the way that I approach this task. And just two things that have been really helpful to me that I keep coming back to. [00:11:08] Speaker C: In this chapter on Revelation. He writes and I'll just read this in part as long as the church remains faithful, it will acknowledge the priority and authority of the scriptural witness in its life and witness. At the same time, the definite humanity of the biblical witnesses will also be recognized without apology or embarrassment. It's not a weakness, but a strength of the Christian understanding of revelation. That its original witnesses are unmistakably historically conditioned and remarkably diverse human beings. That we have the treasure of the Gospel in clay jars is true of Scripture as it is of all subsequent Christian witness based on Scripture. Hence not everything found. And see, I'm reading more than I thought it was because you just. Every word he writes is so meaningful. Hence not everything found in the Bible is to be taken as a direct word of God to us. Some texts of the Bible may stand in utmost tension with revelation. He talks about patriarchy and militarism today. It is essential that a Christian doctrine of revelation distinguish clearly between Scripture's witness to the personal self disclosure of God that culminates in Jesus Christ and historical contingencies and ambiguities of this witness. And so again, like if we can really understand that, what does it mean to kind of nurture and children from the get go that same understanding. [00:12:33] Speaker C: And then I'll do one more quote from Dan that is really important. We sort of talk about the capacity of children to think theologically and what it means to nurture that. And he wrote, the work of theology involves creativity and imagination. It's a constructive task. It involves the risk of re presenting the Christian faith in new concepts and in new actions. It demands thinking through and living out the faith in relation to new experiences, new problems and new possibilities. The Bible itself is a model of this process of dynamic representation of the faith of the community in new times and situations. So those are some of the kind of the thinking and the values and priorities that we were holding or I was holding in. [00:13:24] Speaker C: Writing this book. So who is it for? Most children's story Bibles are aimed at children ages 4 to 7. When the publisher originally approached Jackie and then when we were in conversation with her, the initial notion was, gosh, should we be writing a story Bible for preteens? People who had basically outgrown the younger story Bibles? But as we sort of worked on the concept they wanted to, they shifted the focus to saying really write for 7 to 11 year olds. But we're going to market it for ages 4 to 11 because we can imagine that these older elementary schools, older elementary kids might have a younger sibling who's going to listen in. And so for some kids it would be a Bible that they could read on their own. For others, it would be one that an adult would read with and to them. [00:14:15] Speaker C: And so anyhow, so the notion was we're writing primarily for these older elementary school kids, but hoping that there are pieces of it that a younger child would pick up. And then the surprise to me. Jack Lapsley, again, longtime member at NASA, who's now the president of Union Presbyterian Theological Seminary, was one of our Old Testament sort of scholarly reviewers after we had written the manuscript. And when she read it, she wrote to the publisher and said, oh, my gosh, you need a version of this for adults. She's like, this is what adults need. And then Dr. Grace Ji Soon Kim, who did this Madang podcast, she's a professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion. On the podcast, she kept saying, no, no, no, there's no upper age limit for this book. You should say it's for ages 4 and up, kind of like a puzzle. Maybe there's an age that's too young, but you could never start working on this puzzle. And I kind of like. And she was very insistent that that was the case. And then I had the delight. Just this past week, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Trenton has been doing an adult of 6 part adult Bible study using the stories from the Just Love Story Bible. So it was really fun to kind of jump into their zoom and just hear how these adults have been engaging with it. So it's been sort of a delight and a surprise to discover that there is. [00:15:39] Speaker C: Actually way back. Dad, who at one time was associate pastor here at NASA, has long talked about wanting to write a book called Remedial Theology. And that sort of notion of, you know, all the stuff that many of us didn't get as kids, like, what does it mean as adults, kind of catch up on stuff. And again, the gift of NASA is that we have this ongoing, you know, theological education and the sermon every week. But anyhow, so that was the thinking. And then. So the team that came together to write this, Cheryl Rouse Tuesday, was the illustrator. Thank goodness. The first two illustrators that the publisher approached said no, and Cheryl said yes. And she lives in Brooklyn. And when she talked about doing the illustration of the Bible, she said, I just, you know, I'd leave my apartment every day and look at my neighbors, look at the strangers, look at the people on my street and wanted them to be reflected in this story. And so you just see these gorgeous shades of brown and tan and images that look a lot like Cheryl's neighborhood, which Give it incredible vibrancy and again, hoping that there's a whole bunch of kids who get to finally pick up a story Bible and see kids that look like them. There's Dr. Jackie Lewis in the middle, who's now the pastor at Middle Collegiate Church. And, and again, she wrote all the New Testament stories and then I did all of the Old Testament stories. So, yeah, so anyhow, so it took a year working out the organization of the Bible and doing the story selection. And originally I had wanted to pair contemporary stories with each of the Old Testament stories to again, kind of reinforce for children that, you know, God's still active in our lives, in people's lives today. But the publisher said that's probably a different storybook. But so a year of working through just the proposal and story selection again. The first time that I sent the story list, proposed story list to the publisher, to the editor, she's like, but wait a minute, where's David and Goliath? And I said, well, we only get 52 stories of God's love and justice. The story where the kid kills their opponents probably not going to make the cut. It's like, you know, what about the story of, you know, I have instead the story of David and Jonathan and their loving lifelong friendship. But there is that kind of knee jerk sense of if this is a children's Bible, of course you're going to tell David and Goliath and of course you're going to tell it in this frame that we've inherited and Noah's Ark isn't in there and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But it was another one where at first it was like, how could you have a children's story Bible without Noah's Ark? And well, actually I guess I'll go ahead and talk about it now. And again, if you've only got 26 stories from the Old Testament and 26 from the New Testament that are going to carry the big story of God's love and justice, the one where God kills all of humanity because we're just too horrible, probably not going to make that cut. I will say I was working really hard not to read Carol's wonderful growing God's love story Bible or any others while I was writing this because I didn't want to, you know, be influenced by them. I really needed it to be sort of original. But going back, once this was done, going back and reading that, they do a beautiful job of contextualizing Noah's Ark and helping people understand that in a better way, but anyhow. So I'm grateful that there's some folks who've tackled that challenge and succeeded at it, but it wasn't one of the ones that made the. So there was a lot of back and forth with the publisher on that story selection. But again, it's super easy when you're taking love and justice. How do we convey that big story of the Bible? [00:19:25] Speaker C: So a year on the proposal, three months to write it, which is a lot less time than I would have liked. And then this wonderful illustrator had a year to do the illustrations and then probably long production. So a mere four years later, we have the Just Love Story Bible. So what I'd love to do is actually read the introduction because I think it kind of, again, carries and encapsulates some of those priorities and values that I was talking about. And then we just hit some of the themes in the book, and then we'll end. I'll. We'll read together two more stories and then would love to kind of move to questions or whatever, but. So Jackie. So Jackie wrote an introduction which in. In her introduction, she really talked about. [00:20:16] Speaker C: Why we don't have a blonde, white, you know, blonde Jesus in. In the story Bible and kind of what it means to think about what the folks from where Jesus was from might really have looked like. And then this was my introduction. God's big story. Yay. We are so happy that you're holding the Just Love Story Bible. Why are we so glad? Because these stories are meant for everyone, and that includes you. Whether you've read and heard Bible stories before or this is the very first time, whether they're stories you love and want to hear again or stories you have big questions about or disagree with. The great thing about stories from the Bible is that they've been told for thousands of years by all kinds of people in all sorts of places, in many different versions. Because people have always wondered about the great mysteries and most important questions in life. Like how did our world come to be? Are people more than just their bodies? What makes the me of me? What's a soul? Is there a source of love that we can't see or touch, but that's real and powerful? Why do people have so many different ideas about God? And how can we figure out what's most important? Why do terrible and unjust things happen? What are the best, most loving and fair ways to live with each other? Can we believe in something huge and mysterious and invisible like God and still have questions, doubts, and disagreements? How does God show up in Our lives. [00:21:44] Speaker C: Before stories in the Bible were ever written down, they were told aloud, passed on from person to person, from community to community. The way some stories were told changed. People stopped telling some stories and started telling new stories. Over time, the stories were written down. Still later, leaders made decisions about which stories would be considered part of the Bible. [00:22:09] Speaker C: If the Bible hadn't been written down, people might have stopped telling some of the stories in it because they no longer offer a helpful understanding of God. There would have been new stories added because God's still active in our lives and there are new stories we can tell that show us something true about God. The big message of the Bible is that God loves us and created us to love God and each other, to do justice and to love kindness. There are lots and lots of stories of people told, songs they sang, experiences they remembered or heard about, ideas they pondered, history they tried to make sense of as they tried to learn about God and how to live as God's people. For the Just Love Story Bible, we picked 52 stories that tell the big message of the Bible. These stories invite us to wonder together about the mystery of God and how we can live together with love and justice. This isn't a book of answers, but an invitation to ask important questions. It's a way to hear how others have had questions about God and the answers they discovered. To have your own ideas and ponder your own experiences and to keep on wondering, you are part of God's big story of love and justice, and you always will be. Your stories matter. Your experiences and ideas and questions matter. You matter. That's why we're so glad that you're here. [00:23:38] Speaker C: So 52 stories again, the 26 in the old Testament were grouped on the beginning of love. The Exodus story, Genesis stories, a freedom movement were those stories from Exodus. Daring to dream. A just loving community was sort of the remaining books from the Torah. And then God's people stand up for each other. Stories from Ruth and Samuel and Kings and Esther. Songs for the movement were the Psalms. And then speaking out for justice from the. [00:24:08] Speaker C: Prophets. And then the stories that Jackie wrote. Birthing revolution, a movement of love, a week of holy conflict, the power of hope. And the movement continues. [00:24:22] Speaker C: So let me just. So each, each of these sections has sort of an introductory couple of pages that both try to connect to children's lives and then kind of underscore again some of the framing context or understandings that we want children to be hearing these stories with. And so I'll maybe just kind of hit on a couple of Those and then we'll read two stories and then would love to be in conversation. So for part one, the beginning of love stories from Genesis, we talk about kinds of beginnings in kids lives, what Genesis means and then, and this is the first of several times that we talk about the Old Testament, that old doesn't mean replaced or outdated or kind of, but that it just means that it was written first. [00:25:11] Speaker C: And then again, oops, sorry, kind of underscore again the notion of the development of these stories, that they were passed on from community to community. [00:25:22] Speaker C: And then naming it again. This is the first time that we kind of put this in words which again we hope will be not only helpful for children's understanding but might help give adults some language for this. We say some of the stories are about made up characters and events, others are about real people and things that really happened. Either way, the stories were told and retold because they help people learn something true about God or themselves. The stories they wove together into Genesis communicate one big message. God has always been and always will be there for us. We can trust God's everlasting love and God's promises. That's a good place to begin. [00:26:06] Speaker C: So those are some of the framing that we have for these stories from Genesis. For Exodus, one of the framings that we were really trying to underscore was just that the big message of the book of Exodus is that God is on the side of freedom and justice, that we can trust that God wants injustice to end. We can believe that hate and harm, unfairness and injustice are not how God wants our world to be. And we can experience God with us as we spread love, work with others to make things fair and speak out bravely against each, against injustice. [00:26:38] Speaker C: For the part three, the stories from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, again we kind of go back to. [00:26:48] Speaker C: Helping kids understand sort of the Old Testament and the Torah, that again that it's not outdated or replaced and that every book in the Bible is about the same loving God. There's no Old Testament God and New Testament God, but this God told through these two sets of stories. And again that God's mystery that no one person will ever understand perfectly so that we have different ideas about God. On the third section, God's people stand up for each other. Here we're really introducing the notion of around the historical books of what remembered history is again, that there's a difference between kind of factually verifiable history that they might read in school versus remembered history, which again. [00:27:35] Speaker C: Doesn'T make it not valuable, but it's a different kind of history and it's okay to what that means. When family stories are told time and again and change. And then the other concept that really gets introduced here is that how stories are told not only changes over time, but also depends on who's telling them and beginning to sort of plant the seed in kids that these Bible stories have been told from a particular vantage point and they might have been told differently by somebody else in the context. And so say, just like with family stories, how stories are told changes over time and depends on who is telling them. Whenever we read a story about the past, we can think about who told the story and imagine how it might have been told differently by someone else there. For example, the Bible includes stories the Israelites told of coming to a new land, and the stories would be told very differently by the people already living in that land. And then it sort of talks about the kinds of stories. And so again, just helping kids begin to think about the perspective from which these stories were shared. Psalms. Just wanting to make sure that kids know the sad man feelings are okay too. And so we have praise psalms and lament psalms and then the final section of the Old Testament speaking out for justice, the prophets. [00:28:55] Speaker C: Just kind of going back to the themes of justice and that we are part of proclaiming those messages of God. So anyhow, so those are some of the themes that I was hitting in the Old Testament part of this. I hope you'll buy a copy and hear some of the themes that Jackie was picking up in the sections that she wrote, but would love to maybe just read two more stories and then sort of turn to conversation if that works. So the first story is Jonah. And again, I can nod this a little bit later. This has not been uncontroversial to have told the story this way, but I'll go ahead and read it. [00:29:37] Speaker C: When speaking up is hard. Have you ever heard of a fish story? It's when someone starts with a true story, say they caught a little minnow, and by the 10th time they've told it, it sounds like they caught a great white shark. It makes for a more exciting and memorable story. Our fish story is about Jonah. Lots of different people told this story and added to it. The story about Jonah is made up, but the story is in the Bible because there are still true things we can learn about God and ourselves from it. Here's how it goes. God's word came to Jonah, telling him to go to a big city named Nineveh. And speak out against it. The people in Nineveh were not acting in a just or loving way. Speaking out to Nineveh sounded scary, especially since the Ninevites were considered terrible enemies of the Israelites. Jodah hightailed it out of there and got on a ship trying to run away from God. Before he got very far, a big storm at sea threatened to destroy the ship. All the sailors panicked and started throwing things overboard from the ship to keep the ship from sinking. Jonah just snoozed below decks. The captain shook him. Get up. Ask your God to help us. Jonah thought the storm was his fault for trying to run away from God. So he told the sailors to throw him into the sea so the storm would stop. Sailors didn't want to, but they were desperate for the storm to stop. [00:30:58] Speaker A: Stop. [00:30:59] Speaker C: So they did. The story goes that God sent a large fish to swallow Jonah without hurting him. And for three days and nights, Jonah prayed in a fish's belly. You'd think that was the worst part, right? Nope. After the fish vomited Jonah onto the dry land, God's word came to Jonas, telling him again to go to Nineveh and proclaim God's message. All that trouble and the assignment was still the same. [00:31:26] Speaker C: So Finally, Jonah did 40 days more and Nineveh will be overthrown. He yelled. And the people who he thought were the enemy believed him. Everyone, from the oldest grandparents to the newest babies, kings and kids, and even the animals sound a little fishy. Put on scratchy clothes called sackcloth to show how sorry they were and determined to change their ways. When God saw that the people were truly sorry and wanted to start living the right way with love and justice, God forgave them. And guess what? That made Jonah mad. He told the people they were in big trouble with God, and now they weren't anymore. He was upset that God didn't punish the Ninevites. So Jonah sat outside and sulked, day after day after day. Finally, God had enough of Jonah's pouting and worrying more about what he thought was fair than about God's love for other people. Jonah, shouldn't I care about all these people who are so confused about what is right? God's love and mercy are big enough for everyone. [00:32:38] Speaker C: Okay, one more. And this one's going to need your participation because it's about swarms of locusts, which are. We need a lot of noise, a lot of sound. And again. [00:32:49] Speaker C: In my sort of thinking on the selection, it was going to be hard to help unhook folks from the sort of Long time sort of cultural understanding of the Noah's Ark story. And so pick this, I love this Joel story to have another way to invite kids to think about is this really God's punishment or is this what it means to worry about having done the wrong thing and thinking what would it be like if God punishes us? [00:33:22] Speaker C: So I'm going to need you to help me make the locust sounds as we get to them. And again, Bible didn't include with these locusts sound like, I've never heard these locusts. So we kind of made it up. But you can help me here. Okay. So God's word came to the prophet Joel, who called out to the grownups in the land to hear what had happened. He urged them to tell their children and for those children when they became grown ups, to tell their children and for those children to tell their children on and on for every generation. So what was this important story to tell? Help me here. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Cutting locusts swarmed over the crops, eating their fill, leaving very little for the people. What could be worse? [00:34:08] Speaker C: Swarming locusts swooped in, eating what the cutting locusts had left. Okay, that was worse then. Boing, boing, boing. Here come the hopping locusts. You guessed it. Eating what the swarming locusts had left behind. Surely that was the end of the bad news. Nope. [00:34:32] Speaker C: The destroying locust came and ate the last morsels. Disaster. The grownups wept and worried. The children's stomachs growled and the babies wailed from hunger. Four natural disasters, one after the other. [00:34:50] Speaker C: The prophet and the people thought they were to blame. They thought the disasters were God's way of punishing them. They didn't know that when bad things happen, like swarms of bugs or floods, earthquakes or tornadoes, is not God's plan punishment. But it's easy to worry when bad things happen. To feel like God's angry with you even when that's not true. [00:35:14] Speaker C: The people promised each other that they would try harder to live how God wants. That's always a good thing to do in good times and bad. Not to keep God from punishing us, but because when we live together as God's people, we can help each other through the hard times, sharing, caring, and working to make things better. And in good times, it increases our joy. Joel reassured the people of God's beautiful I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old people shall dream dreams, and your young people shall see visions. What did the daughters and sons prophesy back then? Perhaps one of them bravely announced to the prophets, priests and people, I don't believe that our loving God sends terrible things to teach us a lesson. Maybe one of them said to the rich and the powerful, I and others are enslaved. That's wrong. God made us all equal. [00:36:06] Speaker C: Maybe another said to one of the rulers, God's word came to me. When bad things like war happen, it's not God punishing us. Sometimes people make bad choices that hurt other people. What big ideas do you have to share about living God's way? [00:36:24] Speaker A: So. [00:36:26] Speaker C: A little taste of that. [00:36:29] Speaker C: And had some sort of wonderful reviews and feedback on the Just Love Story Bible. Publisher Weekly did a piece, Religion News Service did a piece, Presbyterian Outlook, U.S. catholic. And then there has definitely been some blowback from sort of the fundamentalist community. [00:36:54] Speaker C: Which I'll just, I don't want to get stuck on this, but Breitbart News did a piece about the female reverence writing this book, and then Fox News jumped on it with 10,000 of their followers about this cunning agent of Satan and then focused on the family, started warning people about, quote, the Bible children should not read. And then you can see how demonic this, how dangerous is this. Just Love Story Bible with child. And so anyhow, from New Zealand to, you know, around the globe, there are tens of thousands of people who are preaching and warning their children and parents to stay away from this creation of the agent of Satan. But that is not the end of the story. This is actually me with the founder and president of the Children's Defense on Marian Wright Edelman sharing a copy with her. And the. [00:37:46] Speaker C: Justice and love may as a frame for understanding God may be threatening to some, but really celebrate those for whom this is good news and are eager to share it with the children in their lives. So I'd love to be in some kind of conversation or hear questions that you've got. [00:38:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:12] Speaker B: Coming to you. [00:38:17] Speaker C: Simple question. Are there translations? Not yet. Great question. It has not been translated yet. There is actually an audiobook that Jackie Lewis recorded that's available, but it has not been translated yet. Yeah. [00:38:34] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So Jackie Lewis read both halves of it. [00:38:41] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:38:42] Speaker B: She's also a good storyteller. [00:38:43] Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes. And she learned from the best. [00:38:48] Speaker A: We'd like to congratulate you for triggering all of those emotions from all the other constituents. Have you had any response to, I. [00:38:57] Speaker C: Mean, have you generated a response to that? Yeah, you know, the publishers really encourage us not to engage again. If you go on Amazon, you'll see folks who have read the book, including Katie Bellman, have written some reviews of it. And then there are all these reviews of folks who haven't even purchased the book that are just kind of responding. And so we've really been told, not that this isn't really aimed at a conversation or communication, that it's really just people responding to that. I will say that the one. [00:39:26] Speaker C: There'S a woman, Cindy Wang Brandt, who has a group with tens of thousands of members called Raising Kids Unfundamentalists that are actually parents who might have been raised fundamentalists with this notion of the infallibility and inerrancy of scripture who are trying to figure out like they know that that theology doesn't fit them anymore and are wondering how do they help their children grow into a different kind of theology. And so. [00:39:52] Speaker C: Or mostly just taking heart from the fact that the folks that we hoped would get ahold of this book are in. This other noise has been really, you know, again. [00:40:06] Speaker C: It'S such a. Like a game of telephone. Again, people who haven't even read it are just responding to this. Had a focus on the family saying warn everybody about the dangers of this book. So we've tried not to engage it. [00:40:18] Speaker C: Have you had any response from other faiths like the Jewish community or the Muslim community? You know, it's a great question. Part of my work at Auburn is working with the Multi Faith group, Multi Faith Young Adult Leaders. We actually one of our reviewers. [00:40:34] Speaker C: That we had was Amy Jill Levine, who is Jewish, a New Testament professor who has done a lot of work on sort of Jesus, the Misunderstood Jew and kind of understanding that and really wanted her eyes on both the Old Testament and New Testament parts to make sure that some of the antisemitism that has come to us through Christian tradition didn't get embedded unwittingly or replicated in that. And so we were really grateful that she took the time to sort of review it with those eyes and commitment. [00:41:16] Speaker B: I saw your hand raising. [00:41:22] Speaker A: So just a follow up question about the number, the bad reviews or the don't read it. Do you sense that all of that was. Is built around your phrase made up. [00:41:35] Speaker C: Stories, you know, rather than anything else. [00:41:39] Speaker A: That'S in the book. [00:41:40] Speaker C: That was a trigger thing, you know, a great question. It sort of felt like there were sort of three categories of outrage about it. One was that. [00:41:50] Speaker C: These pastorettes are non existent. I mean that we are women and that we actually imagined that we were clergy. I mean, so there's this whole thing which is, I mean I can't repeat many of the things that people called us but, you know, non existent or, you know, female reverence, nonexistent, you know, so. So that was a piece of it. Actually. The first clue that something was I didn't know about the Breitbart article is I got an email telling me all the plagues I was gonna die from. And then quoting Revelation about, you can't change a word or jot or tittle of this Bible. And so there's some for whom I guess anything other than just the way that King James dictated the Bible is considered heresy. And sort of. And then the third major. And then I'd say there may be two more categories. One is sort of this charge of you're cherry picking Scripture or it's a social justice agenda thing, which again for me, I'll go back to that first screen of Micah 6, 8, here's what's important. And Jesus being asked, like out of all of this, what's most important? It's like God and love neighbors. So if Jesus can cherry pick and have an agenda, I'm okay with being accused of cherry picking which stories made it in there. And so that's okay. And then absolutely the kind of bringing in historical criticism and for sure the. [00:43:18] Speaker C: Saying, you know, that some of the stories are made up but can still teach you something true about God is not sufficient for somebody who believes in the inerrancy and infallibility of scripture. There's one fairly absurd sermon that some pastor in Texas preached that he created a big PowerPoint that has a sperm whale. And then he shows the size of a person next to the sperm whale. And then he has slides of me talking about how this agent of Satan. [00:43:49] Speaker C: Doesn'T understand that a person really could fit inside of a sperm whale. There's a lot of energy about saying, which again, you know, I mean, to me, I mean, to me it's really sad that some of the level of kind of hate that's expressed is understood by some people to be the best. Their Christian duty is to. [00:44:13] Speaker C: Express that kind of hatefulness. But more than anything, it again reminds me that if we help children engage with scripture the way that we as adults do, with this capacity to understand it as a variety of kinds of materials that were formed over time. And like, if we start that way with children when they're young, there won't be this shock as a 40 year old. What do you mean Jonah wasn't swallowed by the whale? Or you know, that the outrage and angst I think is just what happens if somebody has spent their entire life being convinced that there could be no contradiction or no error or no. [00:44:58] Speaker C: You know, one person wrote, you know, was very outraged and she thinks somebody besides Moses wrote Genesis. It's like I didn't think that actually. [00:45:11] Speaker C: You know, it's just, it's. [00:45:14] Speaker C: So my hope is again just that to give both children and the grownups who love them some new language and some new ways of thinking about it that they won't outgrow. But that is really a trustworthy faith that will stand them in good stead, like Jeremiah, from the time they're kids until they're old, and that they will know that God is with them every step of the way. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Last question. [00:45:45] Speaker A: First, I want to thank you for what's a wonderful contribution you've made. And I wish you'd done it a lot sooner. I was thinking I would have liked to do it with my kids, but I like to have had it. When I was a kid, I remember thinking, there's something you're not telling me. There's stories that they're telling me. And that was kind of a big deal because there's not much else going on in the south, but there's a lot of talented go to church and that was it. And they'll tell these stories. There's something I want to know and I didn't ever. You didn't have a way to go to where you are. So that's just fantastic that you know, less that's being done now. But anybody going to do it in video? [00:46:26] Speaker C: What's that? [00:46:26] Speaker A: Anybody going to lined up to do it in video? Because that's where my kids. I mean, I was thinking I could give him a book. But you can't and I can't be there. But video is what goes direct to the kids. [00:46:40] Speaker C: That's a great idea. And again, like with the illustrations would so lend themselves to some sort of kind of an animated telling. That's a really wonderful idea. I'll actually mention that to the publisher. All right, can we get one more. [00:46:52] Speaker B: Round of applause for Shannon? [00:46:54] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:46:54] Speaker B: Thank you. And as Lauren pointed out, all of the different sections in the Just Love Story Bible cover the chancel text. So I mean really, whether you have a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, neighbor with small kids, great stocking stuffer. I hope that you all come back to join us next week. Hannah Reichel is going to be here to talk about their new book for such a time as this, an emergency devotional. So hopefully we'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.