Disorientation and the Inevitable Crisis of Biblical Illiteracy

In Yuval Levin’s much-praised recent book, The Fractured Republic, the political analyst comments on how one of the defining marks of American public life thus far in the twenty-first century is undoubtedly disorientation. He writes:

“It’s as if we cannot quite figure where we stand, and therefore where we’re headed…we live in a period of profound transformation.”

For Christians, this disorientation feels even more pronounced. We feel the force not just of societal change, but of our faith’s rapidly changing place within that society. Like the early remnants of a sandcastle after the first tide has come and gone, we see the clumped heaps of a tower that remains and so find ourselves at once both wistfully looking back to supposed ‘glory-days’, and anxiously looking forward, apprehensive of the change that’s still to come.

And perhaps the most marked of these signs of disorientation is what pollster George Barna has called the ‘crisis of biblical illiteracy’. Indeed the very phrase is enough to draw out knowing shakes of the head and deep, long, sighs from the faithful.

Sadly it’s a crisis that makes for fairly dramatic statistics. One poll revealed 12% of American adults believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Here in the UK the Bible Society surveyed children aged 8-15 and found that a third couldn’t identify the Nativity as a biblical story. That percentage doubled for Jonah. Can you take more? One in three children thought Harry Potter was in the Bible, and over half thought The Hunger Games might have been too. For a second it’s ditzy funny, and then you realise it’s just plain desperate. DeYoung & Gilbert have described how the Bible’s increasingly peripheral place in the West has “spawned a rising generation of postmodern biblical illiterates”.

Moving from Familiar Stories to Finding Our Place in The Story

But how do we tend to respond to these statistics? Well, there’s probably two typical quick-fire reactions. The first is blame. Biblical illiteracy? Yep, that’ll be the fault of our consumer culture’s carte-du-jour of endless options. And, of course, throw into the mix the distracting banality of social media, and if together those aren’t enough of a ’cause’, then we can always assign fault to liberal Christianity’s gentle erosion of a high view of Scripture. Blame.

And the second reaction? Well, it’s obvious: more Bible, right? We need to fight for the Bible back in our schools, lobby the Bible back in the town hall, and of course press for a new reformation and put confident Bible teaching back in the pulpit. Unless we get more Bible then we may as well give up any hope of people being able to distinguish their King David from their Dumbledore, or their Peter from their Peeta. Biblical Illiteracy + more Bible = biblical literacy, right?!

But whoever came up with that ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’ idiom was onto something. Because when it comes to knowing the Bible, being able to identify a few trees is a very different thing to standing in awe of the whole forest. Maybe in our fervour to reverse this outbreak of biblical illiteracy, we’ve forgotten that facts and stories are not what we’re after.

The real challenge of biblical illiteracy is moving beyond familiarity with Bible stories to introducing people to the Bible’s big story.

And never mind surveys of British schoolchildren, those of us in the pastorate probably need to up our game for a start. Surely the ultimate evidence of biblical illiteracy is when Christians don’t even treat the Bible as one big story. Surely that shows we’ve misunderstood what the Bible is for? Not only can we suffer from a recurring inability to read Bible verses in the context of their particular book, but – and perhaps more devastatingly – we often fail to place those books within the context of one overarching biblical narrative. 

Why would we want to see a generation grow up well versed in the accounts of Joseph, Joshua, and Jonah, if they still failed to set them within God’s great story of redemption. Herman Bavinck put it well when he noted that the Bible doesn’t consist of “a number of disconnected words and isolated facts but [that it] is one single historical and organic whole, a mighty world-controlling and world-renewing system of testimonies and acts of God” (Reformed Dogmatics, 340).

And as we see this big story, we see a bigger Jesus: a Christ who doesn’t just rock up by chance in Israel one day, but one who has been promised and longed for. The Author has stepped onto the pages and has come as a better Adam, a perfect law-keeper, a suffering servant. He will right every wrong, stand in our place, restore us to our Maker, and bring about the perfect world we long for.

Only God’s Story Can Bear the ‘Burden of Identity’

Of course, those of us who feel we have benefited from having the Scriptures taught to us as a unified story will feel particularly strongly about this. I remember being handed a copy of Vaughan Roberts’ God’s Big Picture as a fresh-faced teenager and being told to dive deep. Wow, I felt like I’d never spotted Luke 24:27 before. Then it was on to Graeme Goldsworthy’s According to Plan and my mind was well and truly blown. So of course it’s right that we care about right exegesis and bang the table for biblical theology.

And yet what if recovering the Bible’s big story is actually about more than ‘right theology’? What if this was the very thing our fractured world needs right now?

In the face of the gaping cavern of biblical illiteracy, what if sharing this ‘big story’ is what will truly bring the hope and stability that is so absent in our disorientated cultural moment?

A fascinating series of articles appeared in the Irish Times earlier this year, examining several common cultural identities currently inhabited across modern Europe. And yet the editor, Ian Maleney, observed that despite their diversity, there was a shared characteristic amongst them: the “exhausting and attritional effort” it takes us to both maintain these identities and then ‘perform’ them in front of others. We are desperate for something that relieves us of the “burden of identity”.

One telling example was the notion of the ‘hipster’. Maleney comments on how it has become almost cringeful; too obvious, too intentional, another “visible, shameful evidence” of this burdensome quest for meaning. He then concluded the series with this striking comment:

“Living in a world that says we can always do better, a world that consistently presents the impossible and unreachable as ordinary and everyday, we live with the cruel optimism that we might uncover “a meaningful narrative” about who we are. This is the dream. Where can I get it, and how much does it cost?”

Like a plane desperately struggling to find its equilibrium in the midst of heavy turbulence, our culture is desperately turning to these personal narratives to find hope and permanence, but slowly finding they can’t just can’t take the strain. 

Thankfully, this is where resources like the recent evangelistic series, Life Explored, or Glynn Harrison’s excellent book, A Better Story, are helping us move in the right direction. For kids (and adults!) there’s The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Big Picture Story Bible. Likewise, it’s been interesting to observe how various university Christian groups in the UK have been using the concept of Story in their evangelistic mission weeks to seeming great effect, and it was also the focus of this year’s Evangelism Conference (talks available here).

As we feel the disorientation of a growing cultural unfamiliarity with the Bible, our response is not to champion the Scriptures for the sake of Bible trivia, but rather to communicate that in this book we have the only story of reality that can bear the weight of our personal struggles for meaning and substance.

Are you sitting comfortably?

When was the last time you picked up a decent kids’ book about the Church? And what about a kids’ book that celebrated God-given difference within the church?

Yeah, I’m struggling too.

Part of that scarcity is perhaps because we instinctively think that Church is hardly going to make riveting subject matter for a children’s book. Maybe it’s hard enough to get the kids reading Christian books, but Christian books about the Church…

That’s why I was so delighted to get our family’s hands on God’s Very Good Idea, one of the Good Book Company’s latest releases, written by Trillia Newbell and illustrated by Catalina Echeverri.

The delicious subtitle is “A true story about God’s delightfully different family”, which underlines that this ‘very good idea’ is all about God making lots of different people who would “all enjoy loving him and all enjoy loving each other”.

And it’s brilliant. The book is aimed at 3-6 year olds, and I think that’s about right. Our oldest is nearly 4, and she loves following along.

Here’s a few things I particularly appreciated:

• Enjoying difference and treasuring sameness. One of Trillia’s phrases that sticks is that “everyone you see is different than you, and the same as you”. I love that. I think that kids get a lot of input about difference in school, and yet that’s rarely rooted in the idea that there is also a sameness: we’re all made in the image of God, and so we’re all valuable. The book really brings out the richness of this difference, and you see how precious the church is in bringing humanity back together through Christ.
• Jesus is at the heart of God’s very good idea. As well as articulating how we’re all made in the image of God, the book also explains how God had to rescue his very good idea through Jesus. This gives the opportunity to show how, because we choose not to love God, we are not therefore able to love each other like we should. Trillia deftly points out that this often shows itself in treating others badly because they are different. Trillia then presents Jesus as someone who embodied loving those who were different to him. Jesus dies so that we can be forgiven, but he also exemplifies how we enjoy loving each other amidst difference.
• Catalina’s illustrations bring colour and life to every page. If you’ve read any of the other books in TGBC’s Tales that Tell the Truth series, then you’ll be familiar with Catalina’s style. She’s got a great eye for detail, and our kids love going through and spotting these. There’s one double-spread page that shows a park scene with loads of different people playing/talking/having fun, to illustrate the goodness of living in God’s world with difference. Then you turn over and there’s the same scene, but with lots of these relationships gone wrong. It was great to go through and ask, “what’s happened… what’s gone wrong here… what about there?” Similarly, there’s some great illustrations to help kids identify with how they treat others badly, and some really fun ‘church community’ scenes that help make the idea of living out ‘God’s very good idea’ a practical reality: people having fun, talking, praying together, weeping together, etc. We enjoyed drawing the parallels with our church situation, and the illustrations really serve the text.

The best kids book are probably those that get adults excited too – and perhaps even teaching us a thing or two along the way. And by referencing the differences we should expect and encourage in our churches: skin colour, sex, languages, disability, hobbies, etc, Trillia has created a resource that will bless kids and grown-ups alike, helping us to have our eyes open to God’s very good idea.

The last page has the simple invitation, “And, with your church family, you can enjoy being part of it right now!” And would you believe it, by that point I reckon you’ll really want to!

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Why not enjoy this teaser trailer:

You can pick up God’s Very Good Idea from the publisher, The Good Book Company, here.

Disclaimer: The publisher sent me a free copy of this book, but I hope it is still a fair review.

It’s a delight to have the wonderful Claudia Sear guest-post at That Happy Certainty, as she shares some of her reflections on being a new parent at church…

“The social times before and after a church service are a great chance for us to enjoy our church family and deepen our friendships. But, let’s be honest, for some of us and in some seasons, those times can be hard. Perhaps you’re an introvert, or hard of hearing or just desperately trying avoid eye-contact with the guy organising the sponsored swimathon*! Or maybe, like me, you’re a new parent, and suddenly these moments have become full of new challenges to navigate. So, here’s a few thoughts on how a church family can particularly love new parents at church:

1. Talk to us… not to the baby.

It’s amazing to know so many people love your little one! Your interest is so appreciated. But asking, “How are you?” whilst looking at a mother’s face means something quite different to “How is she?” whilst grinning at a baby. Maybe the baby is happy and healthy, but mum is not. Maybe new-dad just isn’t coping. Or maybe life is difficult for a whole host of reasons aside from the baby: maybe their friend has just died; maybe their parents are ill; maybe they have great news about a job. But it’s hard to share if the only topic is the little one. And this goes for sharing ‘the peace’ too – make sure you greet the parents not just baby!

2. Talk about yourself!

New parents are still interested in you!  They love their babies but they don’t actually believe them to be the centre of the universe. How are you doing? What are your troubles? Tell me how I can help you. How can I pray for you? It’s tricky for me to be a supportive and loving sister in Christ to you if we only ever talk about teething and sleep routines.

3. Talk about the sermon.

Let’s encourage one another by talking about what we’ve heard from God’s word. If a mum missed the whole sermon because she was next door getting covered in milk and poo, she would probably love you to tell her what she missed. And she probably won’t be that encouraged by being told how cute her baby was when they did that thing with that toy during the talk (by the way, being told this is especially discouraging if my husband is actually the one speaking!)… As a new parent, it’s very easy to feel like you are distracting everyone.

4. Give us encouragement, not pity.

I’m often asked, “Is she good?” This is a weird question, but I think mostly people mean, “does she sleep all night?”. She does not, on account of being a baby. But this then makes people look very concerned which in turn makes me wonder if my baby is broken. I wonder if this applies to parents whose toddlers are throwing tantrums in the toilet or whose teens are chatting at the back of church.

Pity makes parents wonder if something out of the ordinary is going on, as if perhaps no one else is struggling with this. But encouragement lets us know that you see us at work raising small people who are limited and sinful like the rest of us, and that you are praying for us in it. Children are a blessing (albeit one that involves a lot of poo and not much sleep). Don’t feel sorry for us, but do let us know you’re behind us.

5. Know that you are loved.

Lastly and very crucially, the meals you brought round, the prayers you offered and the clothes you passed down have made things a million times easier. Thank you. Being part of a church family is such a blessing! Please know that new parents love you for this – even when they’re so tired they forget your name.

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So I hope these thoughts help you on Sunday as you try and talk to the woman who doesn’t know she has vomit in her hair, or the man who is still gently swaying even though it’s his wife who is holding the baby.

Of course, new parents are just one example of the type of person we meet with on a Sunday. We each have different sensitivities and needs, but we mustn’t be afraid of the mess of knowing each other and loving each other well. Jesus’ church is full of all kinds of people, from all kinds of places and at all ages and stages of life. It can make church hard, but it definitely makes us beautiful!

*By the way, going back to the swimathon, I once failed to avoid the ‘sign-upper’, and was signed up to swim, despite explaining that, being afraid of water, I didn’t even own a costume.” 

Claudia Sear graduated from Oak Hill Theological College in 2015. She now lives in Brighton and has two cats, two rabbits, one husband, one baby and one ring to rule them all.