What Does Noah Have in Common with Barney?

Do you remember Barney the Purple Dinosaur?  My daughter loved watching Barney while she was growing up.  I mean, she really loved it. She would dance, sing the songs, and be mesmerized the entire ½ hour the show was on. My wife and I didn't mind so much because Barney was a decent show. It taught lessons like sharing, playing nice together, picking up after yourself, and other things kids need to learn. I guess a lot of parents felt the same way because Barney, at least at that time, was enormously popular.

So what does any of this have to do with Noah? I'll tell you. Have you ever been in a kids' Sunday school class where they told Bible stories about Noah, or Daniel, or David? They sometimes color pages with little cartoons of Bible characters. They sing songs and play Bible themed games. They hear life lessons about being nice to other people, obeying your parents, and worshiping God. These are all things that Christians parents should want their kids to learn. It's a lot like watching Barney.

My daughter is 31 now and doesn't watch Barney anymore.

I think Churches sometimes do a disservice to kids by talking about the Bible the same way they talk about a fairy tale. They might not say it's a fairy tale, but they teach it with the same trappings and trimmings as kids see on Barney. It has the music, the games, and it always seems to end with “a moral to the story.” In their little minds, I'm not really sure how kids can be expected to distinguish between Bible stories taught in this manner and other fairy tales like Barney, Mother Goose, or Aesop's Fables.

When these same kids start school, what might happen? Ask yourself this question: If I wanted to learn about science or dinosaurs or the universe, where might I look? Really. Think about it for a second. Name some places where you might learn about science. Next ask, If I wanted to learn about morality or religion where might I look? The answers seem obvious. Like it or not, if people want to learn about science or “facts,” the first places they think to look are schools or text books and if people want to learn about religion, only then would they look to the Bible or the Church. People tend to only think of the Bible as a book about religion. If they want to learn about the “real world,” then you have to go to school or turn to science.

We are telling kids that schools are important and will teach them things they need to know about the world. We believe it ourselves. So when these kids go to school and hear that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, there really was no Flood, and men used to be apes, I think they're apt to believe it. Worse yet, these things directly contradict the “stories” they heard in Sunday school. On Sunday, they sing songs like, “♪Oh God said to Noah, 'There's gonna be a floody floody....'♪” Then they go to school on Monday and hear that there really was no Flood. Which do you think they'll believe? The nursery rhyme or the “facts” they learned in school?

Simply telling children that we don't believe in evolution isn't enough. Imagine a group of kids going to a museum and seeing the fossils of dinosaurs, seeing stone tools used by “ape-men,” and reading that these things lived hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago. To them, these are “facts.” This is “evidence.” When a confused child asks his Sunday school teacher if dinosaurs really lived millions of years ago, the well-meaning teacher might answer, “Oh, we don't believe that.” Then the child might ask, “No? Then what do we believe?” and the teacher answers, “We believe that, '♪God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody....'♪” You can see how that's not convincing.

Christ called us first to preach the gospel. He then commanded us to make disciples. Preaching the word is only half the job; we also must be teachers. When we teach the Bible to children, I think we should approach the task in much the same way that kids learn in school. We don't just talk about a man named Noah. Instead, we explain that he was a person who lived in history. When they find a fossil (probably of a shell), it's evidence that this place was once under water – just like the account of Noah tells us. Instead of showing cartoons of Noah's Ark with Noah standing on the deck of the Ark in a raincoat surrounded by a menagerie poking out of every window, we need to show them scale drawings of what the Ark might have looked like. When they ask us about fossils of dinosaurs or Neanderthals, we need to show them how these things are explained by the Bible.

Making lessons interesting and understandable to kids is fine. But above all else, we need to be sure that they understand that the “stories'' from the Bible are real events that happened in history. David, Daniel, and Noah were real people just like their moms and dads are real. We need to explain that Barney is just a character like Sponge Bob.

Kids grow up and they stop believing in Barney.  We don't want them to grow up and stop believing the Bible.  Noah is really nothing like Barney.