Princess posted this on another thread, but it looks like not many are reading it. I hope Simon forgives me for putting it in a new thread.
I thought it was so great to see how children think about things, if they aren't "brainwashed" from infancy.
So a few weeks ago my four year old daughter was asking questions about Jesus and decided she wanted to see a picture of him. She actually wanted to see a picture of him DEAD but I showed her some kind of cartoon-like pictures of him in a child's bible. She was not impressed. I decided that the book was simple yet could be interesting to her so I told her we were going to start reading it at bedtime and she could learn about Jesus etc. We started with the creation account in this very simplistic children's bible and she was just thinking it was one big YAWN. I finished the chapter and her daddy read her a nice princess story. I then moved on to my six year old son...Rhys is six but very bright and really thinks about things. I have a more advanced children's bible story book for him and told him the same thing. We are going to start reading this from the beginning so you will know the whole story. I didn't get far.
I read the creation account, fairly interesting to him, left him wondering about the fact that there was a beginning and the earth and it's inhabitants weren't always here. Moved on to the garden of Eden and that's when things started getting tough. He just didn't buy it. After getting past the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he interrupted me and said "god shouldn't have made that tree". I told him it was a test but he firmly stood his ground and said it was a mistake. We discussed the stupidity of Eve talking to a snake and not wondering why the snake was talking. We wondered why she was so jazzed about the fruit when she should have been calling Adam over to see the talking snake. When I explained that Satan had made himself into a talking snake to fool her he said god should have destroyed Satan right then and there. I told him I thought he was right. He then decided we needed to help god destroy Satan and was planning on rallying up a group of preschoolers the next day to help out. I tried to rein him in a bit. That's what I needed, a bunch of preschool moms calling to find out why my son was convincing their children to kill the devil. I told him it was god's fight and not ours. I was desperately trying to end the discussion by this time as I was completely at a loss as to what to tell him. The whole time I was thinking how I don't even believe this sh*t and I'm trying to explain it to my six year old who saw through it immediately.
I put the book back on the shelf and haven't touched it since. Perhaps it was too soon? Maybe too late? I'll wait awhile and we'll read it just to teach him what some people believe. I don't think he'll be easily convinced himself. We never got past the tree of knowledge.
Rachel