Did you know that your child’s basic impressions of God are impacted by which storybook Bibles you choose? One of my most memorable class sessions in seminary was a guest presentation by an educator who brought in dozens of Christian picture books and children’s Bibles. We were challenged to look at them through the eyes of a young child, considering how we would come to understand God through both the illustrations and the texts, themselves. I was shocked by the differences I observed! We then analyzed three popular Sunday School curricula. All were geared toward the same age group and all studied the story of Zacchaeus. In the first, the emphasis was on Zacchaeus’ short stature. The second focused on the tax collector’s sin and repentance. The third highlighted Jesus’ welcome and acceptance.  What very different messages! All were true, but they were nevertheless different. This revealed to me the power of an editor or narrator.

Now, it is highly impractical to critically read through an entire children’s storybook Bible before purchasing it. For this reason, I think it was my professor who suggested that by reading through the stories of Adam and Eve’s deception, and then Jesus’ crucifixion we can usually get a general sense of the author’s perspective. To demonstrate this, consider with me Kenneth Taylor’s explanation of the fall in The New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes.  “[Adam and Eve are not happy] because they have been bad. They did something God told them not to do… now God is punishing Adam and Eve.” Compare this with the description in the Jesus Calling Bible Storybook by Sarah Young. “God has a terrible enemy named Satan. Satan is evil, and he always wants people to do bad things… Adam and Eve could no longer live in [God’s] perfect Garden of Eden. God had to send them away.” Now let us look at the same authors’ portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. Taylor asks, “Can you think what it would be like if you were hanging there with nails through your hands?.. [Jesus was nailed there] because He loves you and me. You and I have done bad things and God should punish us. But God doesn’t want to do that because He loves us… In this picture you can see Jesus being punished for your sins by dying on the cross. That is how much Jesus loves you. He died for you.” Again, compare this with Young’s explanation, “Jesus didn’t deserve this. He had spent his time on earth loving and caring about people… Dying on a cross like a criminal was a sad but very important part of God’s big plan… God had to turn away from all the sin… but it wasn’t [Jesus’] sin. It was ours. Jesus felt it and suffered for it so that we wouldn’t have to… Now God’s people had hope. By asking God’s forgiveness for their sins and believing what Jesus had done for them, their hearts could be made clean.” Notice both authors taught that Jesus died in our place, yet they communicated this truth differently. I would greatly encourage you to compare the stories that you already have at home, or even to spend some time doing so at your local Christian bookstore or library.

The other big thing that I look at when choosing a storybook Bible is the illustrations, specifically the ethnicity of the biblical characters. White people have a long history of imagining that Jesus, his disciples, and angels all had fair skin. Not only is this inaccurate, it also promotes racism because the white child’s identity, understanding of God, and relationships with others are formed with the subconscious belief that God identifies more closely with them than with people of other races, whereas a non-white child can also internalize a sense that these stories belong to others. This tendency is exacerbated with biblical (and human!) language using light and dark to imagine good and evil, and the color white to describe purity and the state of having one’s sin washed clean. Thus, I believe it is very important that Jesus looks Middle Eastern. Now, I can hear some asking, “but couldn’t the same thing be said of the insider-outsider dynamic with a Middle Eastern Jesus?” Well, yes, yes it could. But Jesus’ openness toward Gentiles is one of the central themes of the New Testament. As a Gentile follower of Jesus, I have been grafted into a people and culture not my own. I am an outsider who has been welcomed in and given citizenship. All of that said, we do read two storybooks with largely fair skinned people (The Lion First Bible and Read Aloud Bible Stories). But I only feel comfortable using them while very intentionally supplementing them with others.

My hope is that parents begin recognizing the authors’ perspectives and different emphases in the stories they read, so they are then empowered to make wise choices about which perspectives form their children’s understanding of God. For this reason, we own and read from a number of different Bible storybooks, all of which add something to the treasury of my children’s developing imaginations. My favorites are briefly described here (for infants and young toddlers) and here (for older toddlers and preschoolers).

May God bless you with great joy as you embrace your role in choosing which perspectives gain entry into your children’s hearts!