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 analytical study in the schools, so that the child becomes a man before he voluntarily reads Dickens, Thackeray, the poets, and essayists, in the same manner we have succeeded in making the Bible undesirable to youth. If you read passages 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 classic. 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 passages, 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 worship. This does not conflict with the plea for its use naturally, for worship should be as natural as any of the social pleasures of the family. Here select those passages for reading which count most for the spirit of worship. It is a good plan to read a short passage, suitable for memorizing, so frequently that children learn it and are able to repeat it in concert. Be sure that all the passages read or recited are short. It will often be wise to preface the reading with a brief account of its original circumstances, 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 assume 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. Association 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 Association. Numerous references to the use of the Bible in the home in this volume.
Patterson Dubois, The Natural Way, sec. iv. Revell, $1.25.
III. Methods and Materials
"Passages of Bible for Memorization," Religious Education, August, 1906.
Louise S. Houghton, Telling Bible Stories. Scribner, $1.25.
Johnson, The Narrative Bible. Baker & Taylor Co., $1.50.
Hall and Wood, The Bible Story, 5 vols. King, $2.00 by subscription.
Courtney, The Literary Man's Bible. Crowell, $1.25.
The above are but a few of the many collections of biblical material.
IV. Topics for Discussion
1. What are the conditions which seem to make the reading of the Bible different from other reading? Is there a sense of unreality about it as a book? What are the causes?
2. Try the experiment of reading the story of Joseph at one sitting. Try to retell this to children.
3. What biblical material stands out in your memory of childhood? In what degree is this due to the art of the story-teller or the reader? to the character of the material?
[21] See M.J.C. Foster, The Mother the Child's First Bible Teacher.
[22] Mackie, Bible Manners and Customs.
Chamberlin, Introduction to the Bible for Teachers of Children.
Worcester, On Holy Ground, 2 vols.
[23] For example, Moulton, Modern Reader's Bible. The new Jewish renderings of Old Testament books are good, especially the Psalms.