Adam, Eve, You, Me and God

Teaching children stories from the Old Testament is not always easy, is it? Hey, I admit it! When I served as a Children’s Pastor one of my biggest struggles was how to present a curriculum that would teach kids the essentials of the Old Testament without causing them to stare out the window or want to skip Children’s Worship altogether! Equally frustrating was encouraging my teaching team through our Old Testament levels without getting that much dreaded call, “We really need a break from teaching for a while.” But this got me thinking, and I might have an answer to this. Have you ever noticed that when we teach children the stories of the Old Testament, we tend to kind of focus more on the stories, the people and the events, rather than focusing on God? We focus on the “creation”, but less on the “creator”. We like to focus on the cuddly animals, the cozy ark, Noah and his family waving from the windows, but we sheepishly shy away from God’s judgment. We focus on Adam and Eve, apples and a mean green snake that creeps out from under a tree, but we shy away from the seriousness of the fall of man, and how we suffer for it today. In a way, we focus more on what man has done, rather than what God has done.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking fire and brimstone here! I’m not saying that we need to scare kids into the kingdom of God. Teaching kids is, and should be, fun! We don’t have to throw out all the cute stuff and there are some Biblical issues that kids just can’t handle within their spiritual development. We still need to teach on their level and makes things fun and applicable to their age and learning level. But after teaching this week’s lesson on Adam and Eve, I came to a conclusion that I wanted to share with you.
When you get right down to it, I think that we sometimes feel that the events of the Old Testament are just too difficult to understand, complex and quite frankly, boring for children. We look over an Old Testament story or lesson and our first reaction is, “No way! This is too deep for kids to grasp. I don’t even get this myself? Why can’t we just stick with the stories about Jesus? They understand that stuff!” And what happens? We inadvertently cut off the nose to spite the face. We break scripture down into Cliff's Notes Versions of what “we” think they can understand. And in essence, we compartmentalize God’s Word, without linking it to redemptive history and ultimately to Christ.

Let’s look for a moment at the story of Adam and Eve. Our first reaction might be to focus our lesson on the “man” and the “woman”, what they looked like, what the animals and Garden of Eden looked like and maybe how they functioned within creation. We might focus on what they did, how thy lived and how they related to one another, and to God. And these are all very significant issues in helping us contextualize the story. But let’s briefly take a different approach to this. What is the emphasis of this story? What do you think the author of Genesis really wanted to get across? What did God want to communicate as He spoke through Moses? Well, here’s my thought.

I think the intended emphasis is not really on the “creation”, but the “creator”. The greatness, creativity and power of God! Through His divine power, God brought all of this into being, and we had nothing at all to do with it. And guess what? We still don't. And that’s OK! But let's go a step further. How did God create Adam? Did He simply speak him into being as He did with the rest of creation? No! God personally, intricately and specifically formed Adam out of the earth. And then we see a very distinguishing action that isolates man as the pinnacle of God’s creation: He “breathed” life into Adam! This is not only a physical creation. This is the creation of a spiritual being from the very breath of God! There is so much more here than just physical creation. No other part of God’s creation received this designation.

But the story doesn't end there. God sends a procession of animals before Adam, so that he can give them all names. Was that the only reason that God produced this circus like parade? I don’t think so. I think that the main reason God called on Adam to name the animals was for him to say, “Hey, God? I don’t think any of these are going to work for me? I may be wrong, but I can’t see myself making more of “me” with these things. They’re cool! They’re awesome! But they’re not quite like “me. Something’s missing...” God may have whispered, “Adam, you’re exactly right! Let’s fix that.” And he did!

So, as we teach children about the events of the Old Testament, let us be encouraged and excited by the simplicity of these stories. When we keep the focus on God and His works of creation, children will understand. They will see that the awesome God of the universe created all that we see, and we are really just bystanders to His power and glory. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty cool!


(Art - "Adam & Eve" - Oil on wood by Christina Saj, 1996. www.christinasaj.com)