To read or not to read
Helen Keller’s autobiography has given me much food for thought as a Christian homeschooling parent. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, writes: “Great care has been taken not to lead her (Helen’s) thoughts prematurely to the consideration of subjects which perplex and confuse all minds. Children ask profound questions, but they often receive shallow answers, or, to speak more correctly, they are quieted by such answers. . . . She has not yet been allowed to read the Bible, because I do not see how she can do so at present without getting a very erroneous conception of the attributes of God.”
My reflex is a legalistic flail in defense of Bible-reading to the young. I’ve been reading a children’s Bible storybook to my two young children, a little each day, for the last 6 months or so. I want to model a devotional life in which scripture is the basis of our interaction with God and our perspective on life.
Even though I believe God will honor this, and will negotiate the misconceptions that are sure to come…what if I had waited? Is Anne Sullivan right that their curiosity would have opened the door later, when they’re better able to comprehend “the great mysteries”? Would a time come when I wouldn’t worry that the God of love is all talk to them, while the God that loses His temper and punishes steals the show?
Or is it just arrogance that believes such a time would ever come? Is spiritual understanding dependent on intellectual maturity? Does it do children a disservice to assume that these matters are beyond them?
This approach certainly had favorable results with Helen, who writes later, “But how shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the Bible? For years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and inspiration; and I love it as I love no other book.” She’s not brainwashed either, for she writes, “Still there is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention. For my part, I wish, with Mr. Howells, that the literature of the past might be purged of all that is ugly and barbarous in it, although I should object as much as anyone to having these great works falsified.”
In the end I recall Jesus’ words: “Let the little children come unto Me.” They already live in a world and a human nature that are beyond their ability to process or manage. Even if we could censor their outer world, we can’t censor their inner world. They’re as wonderful and as fallen as adult human beings. Maybe it’s best to introduce them to the grandest, highest, most challenging vision of all now, before their minds are saturated with either their own nature, or the spirit of the age.
