You might remember it doing the rounds on social media—a page from one of those verse-a-day desk calendars, featuring an inspirational Bible quote adorned with a purple flower:
“If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.” (Luke 4:7, KJV)
Simple. Powerful. Heartwarming.
What better way to start your day than by reflecting on this beautiful reminder of God’s promised love and provision?
There’s just one small problem.
Luke 4:7 isn’t a promise from God.
It’s the words of Satan in the wilderness, offering Jesus the kingdoms of the world if he’ll just reject his heavenly Father.
Turns out our inspirational quote is less inspirational when you realise who said it.
Now, obviously this is an extreme example, but hopefully it illustrates the point: context matters. If we want to properly understand the Bible and let it shape our lives, we need more than just a grab-bag of inspirational-sounding one-liners. We need to see how each part of Scripture fits within the whole.
And while Inspirational Quote Theology is a trap anyone can fall into, I think there’s a particular danger here when it comes to sharing the Bible with children.
In some senses, the Bible is a difficult book. It’s massive and ancient and sprawling, and there’s a whole lot of translating we need to do to make sense of it. And because so much of it is tricky for children to understand, the temptation can be to pull out a verse here and there that they can understand and just share that.
This approach feels safe. Simple. Appropriately child-sized.
But I’m convinced that, in the long run, it does our kids more harm than good.
Whenever we open the Bible with our children, or extract a verse and quote it to them, we’re not just teaching them content. Knowingly or not, we’re also modelling how to read and understand Scripture. And if we’re not teaching our kids to engage with the whole Bible, we’re selling them short.
I’m not saying memorising Bible verses is a bad idea. In the wilderness, when he’s offered the world in exchange for his soul, Jesus fires back at Satan with a quote of his own: “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
But when Jesus uses Deuteronomy to rebuke the devil (Luke 4:8), or turns to Genesis to answer a question about marriage (Mark 10:6-9), or quotes King David to hint at his identity as the Messiah (Mark 12:35-37), he’s not drawing from his arsenal of five favourite verses he picked up from Instagram.
He’s drawing from a life saturated in the Scriptures.
Jesus knows the biblical narrative inside and out, and he knows his place in it. He understands that the story of the Bible is his story.
And our kids need to see how it’s their story too.
So how do we do that?
I think a big part of the answer is showing our children how to read biblical texts the way they were written: as complete texts. Don’t just give them Mark 9:23 or John 3:16 in isolation. Why not pick a Gospel and read through the whole thing, a bit at a time? You’ll still be reading the Bible in small, manageable chunks, but those chunks will fit together to make far more sense in the long run.
For a few months now, I’ve been putting this approach into practice at a Bible Study I run for some ten-year-olds at my school. Each week, we open our Bibles together and ask God to help us understand and apply what we hear. Then we read through the next few paragraphs of the life of Jesus.
When there’s a quote from the Old Testament, we follow the footnote to see where it came from.
When we come to a bit they don’t understand, we stop and talk it through together.
When we come to a bit I don’t understand, I don’t panic or make something up. I say, “Yeah, I don’t really get that part either,” and then I go away and do some homework, and then we talk it through together next week.
In the process, I’m trying to model that the tricky parts of the Bible aren’t something to be scared of, that none of their questions are too big for God, that I’m on the journey of faith just like they are, and that ultimately it’s Jesus and not me that they should be looking to for answers.
It’s not a neat, straightforward process (but since when has following Jesus ever been neat and straightforward?). It’s messy and meandering, and we frequently get sidetracked. But through it all, I am constantly blown away by what God is teaching us —and I’m more convinced than ever of how capable kids are of putting the pieces of the biblical story together, if we’ll just take the time to show them how.
Want help to get your kids into the Bible story? Best News Ever is a 100-day guide through the whole Gospel of Mark for kids aged 8-13 to read on their own or as a family.
Chris Morphew is an author, teacher, and school chaplain living in Sydney, Australia. He has written over 20 novels for children and youth, including his six-book young-adult series The Phoenix Files. Chris enjoys Mario Kart, obscure board games, and superhero movies. He has been told he looks like Chris Hemsworth from the back.
