Tonight, PWM read aloud to us from What You Didn’t Learn From Your Parents About Christianity by Matthew Paul Turner. Of course, since PWM was reading to the whole family, our kids won’t be able to say that they didn’t learn all this stuff from their parents, because they are learning it all now! (Did you follow any of that?)
PWM likes reading this as a family because it has started some rather interesting discussions. For example, my kids were aware that the “Sinner’s Prayer” is not actually in the Bible verbatim, but is more like a distillation of what we believe about salvation. They also got to hear how I got down on my knees by my bed probably 5 or 6 times between the ages of 10 and 17 to pray the “Sinner’s Prayer” again since I wasn’t quite sure that it “took” the first time – even though I’d been baptized and everything!
Then we got to the section of quotes about Jesus. My favorite, of course, is this one by C.S. Lewis (from Mere Christianity):
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
Rosie Girl didn’t immediately know that the quote was by Lewis, but she said it sounded very familiar because it was just like what the professor told Susan and Peter about Lucy in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Here is a very small section of the passage (but you should read the whole thing because it’s very good):
“Logic!” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then, and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”
I love family read-aloud time. And I love it when fiction teaches us truth!! Do you have any examples to share?
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