The husband’s co-worker sent her kids to a local Methodist VBS last week. The girls played two games that this co-worker found slightly “theologically suspect.” The first was a version of Simon Says called “God Says.” (The co-worker said she was pretty sure God never told anybody to cluck like a chicken.)
The second, and much more disturbing, game was a version of that childhood favorite, “Telephone.” You know – where you whisper something in somebody’s ear, they pass it down the line, and at the end everyone enjoys a hearty laugh at the way the original message has been distorted to hilarious nonsense.
They played this game with Bible verses.
Even if you are not claiming absolute Biblical inerrancy, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to play this particular game with a Sacred Text that’s centuries old; is translated from ancient languages, including one that lacks vowels and punctuation; and depends in large part upon reported speech.
That’s just bizarre.
This reminds me of a float I saw in my hometown Independence Day parade. The Believers Baptist church was advertising its Vacation Bible School, which, as far as I can tell, used this curriculum, which claims that evolution is not real science and that God created dinosaurs on the sixth (literal) day.
I once accidentally purchased a book for my daughters when they were about 5 and 6 with pictures of dinos and people walking around together–it was from the thrift store. My daughter was about 6 at the time and came to me and showed me the picture. Even they knew this was not right! It went right in the trash! I had no idea–now I check!
I couldn’t help but click on the link Kathy provides up here, and honestly, my first thought was that it was a spoof. Good grief.
So, our sin wiped out the dinosaurs! Just something else to add to the guilt load.
After I posted this, I poked around to see if other Sunday schools were playing the telephone game, and found this site, which describes a similar game and gives the impeccably logical rationale:
Have the kids sit in a circle or line up and play the old telephone game to show how difficult it would be for the people who wrote the different books of the Bible to do so from memory with such accuracy. It would be impossible without the help of the holy Spirit. You can use the following phrases or make up your own.
And thus we see that:
a. Oral tradition and translation result in mistakes.
b. The Bible was created using oral tradition and translation.
c. The Bible contains no mistakes.
d. The Holy Spirit inspired the Bible.
The TrueRassic Park curriculum is the same way – “God’s word remains tried and true.”
Really, I am beginning to doubt the theory of evolution myself. You would think that refusing to question a belief system would be an evolutionarily undesirable trait that would have been wiped out long ago. Maybe it served to make the “herd” more manageable for its leaders.
Good to know you’re beginning to see the light, Del.
/snark
So you mean the actual Bible verse is NOT “Jesus Slept”?????
So you mean the actual Bible verse is NOT “Jesus Slept”?????
Oh no! To think I’ve been using that one all these years as a good excuse to take a nap.