I recently got my eight-year old daughter a Bible and she's been reading it from the beginning. Last night, she was in her room reading when she came across the heading of the story of the Passover. She came out and asked if she should read that part.
"Why wouldn't you?" I asked.
"Isn't it a Jewish story?" she replied.
Oy! What happened? We've talked about Passover before. I love Passover, and I've tried to convey to her my great respect for the Jewish rituals and traditions, but apparently what she got out of it was, "That's Jewish, not Christian." And then to think that maybe she shouldn't even read the story -- wow!
Of course, it was a great "teachable moment" as they say. I went to the Bible with her, put my thumb in Genesis 1 and my index finger in the middle of Acts and said, "That much of the Bible is a Jewish story." And we talked about Jesus being Jewish and the early Christians being Jewish and how really the whole Bible is Jewish and so on.
It's just a bit disturbing how natural it seems to be to put up boundaries. It's no wonder prejudice is so easily passed on from generation to generation.
Monday, February 27, 2006
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3 comments:
Ah those teachable moments with our children are precious. The teach us more than we teach them.
I'm wondering, though, why you stopped in the middle of Acts.
I stopped there because that's where the message starts going to the Gentiles. But you're right in suggesting that it doesn't really stop being Jewish there.
And it's the Passover story, too. Without Pesach, you can't have Pascha. Well, it's a good thing she has you to point these things out.
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