Nick the Pilot
Well-Known Member
The shocking discovery about evangelical Christianity that I made after becoming a father - Salon.com
(The following is an excerpt from the article.)
"Next, painful memories surfaced of the countless stories from Good News Club [GNC] lessons I attended every week of every summer between the ages of 7 and 10. There are thousands of GNCs operating in public schools, churches and backyards. The sponsoring organization, Child Evangelism Fellowship, is the largest and most influential evangelical ministry directed toward young children, with over 700 staff members and 40,000 volunteers.
A family member gave us several old GNC lesson books, the same ones I had read as a child, for the purpose of teaching Nathan. A year after adopting Nathan, I began to review the lesson books. I also checked out a half a dozen other GNC lesson books from an evangelical library. The lessons present all of the familiar (and many not so familiar) Bible stories, about Adam and Eve, the Serpent and the Fall, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Lot and Sodom, Pharaoh and the Ten Plagues, and many others. But GNC presents these stories with terrifying, unmitigated detail. These are not whitewashed versions suitable for young children.
Lessons about God’s commands to Abraham to sacrifice his son (Gen. 9) and to Saul to slaughter all of the Amalekites (I Sam. 15) exemplify God’s demand for total obedience. Lessons about Lot’s wife being transformed into a pillar of salt for stealing a last glance at Sodom (Gen. 19:26), of Aaron’s sons being consumed with fire for offering strange incense to God (Lev. 10:1-3), of Uzzah being struck dead for reaching out his hand to stabilize the ark of the covenant (2 Sam. 6), and of 42 children being mauled for mocking Elisha’s bald head (2 Kings 3:23-25) exemplify God’s terrible punishment for even trivial sins. GNC even tarnishes the more endearing stories, like the story of David’s adoption of Mephibosheth, a paralytic, with commentary on sin and punishment.
Almost every GNC lesson intones that sin—“anything you think, say, or do that breaks God’s laws”—must be punished. The worst sins, of course, are thought crimes: doubt and unbelief. The punishment for sin is death and eternal separation from God. The lessons repeatedly admonish children that they deserve death. One typical GNC lesson text states: “God hates the sinful things you do, like pouting and complaining, or hitting someone. He says you deserve his punishment, which is separation from Him forever in a terrible place called Hell. Have you been set free from the death you deserve for your sin?”
Another recurring GNC lesson theme is about the basic depravity of human nature. One GNC lesson text informs children that: “your heart, the real you, is sinful from the time you are born.” Says another: “[t]here was nothing in me, nor in you, that should cause the Lord Jesus to want to love us. All that is in us is sin and selfishness and pride and hatefulness.” And another: “Even the good things you do aren’t good enough. The Bible says those things are like filthy, dirty rags.”
GNC’s repeated themes about sinfulness and unworthiness are always “balanced” by reminders of God’s “love,” manifested by the opportunity that each child has, through submissive “belief” in the dogmas with which they are being indoctrinated, to be saved. Children are admonished that even though they are undeserving of love, Christ died and suffered on the cross for them, and so they owe God their worship and whole-hearted surrender. One GNC lesson text intones: “Do you love and honor Him for what He did for you? Because of the sin in our lives we are selfish, unkind, disobedient, always doing the things that are wrong instead of right. But the Lord Jesus gave his precious blood on the cross. Dying there, He was taking the punishment for our sins. We owe all that we are to Him.”
GNC’s dark emphases on sin, depravity and obedience are thoroughly Biblical and embraced by the evangelical mainstream. The concepts that all people are conceived in sin (Ps. 51:5), that “nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Rom. 7:18), that the natural self is so flawed as to have “become worthless” (Rom. 2:12), and “by nature [an] object[] of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) are pillars of evangelical doctrine.
(The following is an excerpt from the article.)
"Next, painful memories surfaced of the countless stories from Good News Club [GNC] lessons I attended every week of every summer between the ages of 7 and 10. There are thousands of GNCs operating in public schools, churches and backyards. The sponsoring organization, Child Evangelism Fellowship, is the largest and most influential evangelical ministry directed toward young children, with over 700 staff members and 40,000 volunteers.
A family member gave us several old GNC lesson books, the same ones I had read as a child, for the purpose of teaching Nathan. A year after adopting Nathan, I began to review the lesson books. I also checked out a half a dozen other GNC lesson books from an evangelical library. The lessons present all of the familiar (and many not so familiar) Bible stories, about Adam and Eve, the Serpent and the Fall, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Lot and Sodom, Pharaoh and the Ten Plagues, and many others. But GNC presents these stories with terrifying, unmitigated detail. These are not whitewashed versions suitable for young children.
Lessons about God’s commands to Abraham to sacrifice his son (Gen. 9) and to Saul to slaughter all of the Amalekites (I Sam. 15) exemplify God’s demand for total obedience. Lessons about Lot’s wife being transformed into a pillar of salt for stealing a last glance at Sodom (Gen. 19:26), of Aaron’s sons being consumed with fire for offering strange incense to God (Lev. 10:1-3), of Uzzah being struck dead for reaching out his hand to stabilize the ark of the covenant (2 Sam. 6), and of 42 children being mauled for mocking Elisha’s bald head (2 Kings 3:23-25) exemplify God’s terrible punishment for even trivial sins. GNC even tarnishes the more endearing stories, like the story of David’s adoption of Mephibosheth, a paralytic, with commentary on sin and punishment.
Almost every GNC lesson intones that sin—“anything you think, say, or do that breaks God’s laws”—must be punished. The worst sins, of course, are thought crimes: doubt and unbelief. The punishment for sin is death and eternal separation from God. The lessons repeatedly admonish children that they deserve death. One typical GNC lesson text states: “God hates the sinful things you do, like pouting and complaining, or hitting someone. He says you deserve his punishment, which is separation from Him forever in a terrible place called Hell. Have you been set free from the death you deserve for your sin?”
Another recurring GNC lesson theme is about the basic depravity of human nature. One GNC lesson text informs children that: “your heart, the real you, is sinful from the time you are born.” Says another: “[t]here was nothing in me, nor in you, that should cause the Lord Jesus to want to love us. All that is in us is sin and selfishness and pride and hatefulness.” And another: “Even the good things you do aren’t good enough. The Bible says those things are like filthy, dirty rags.”
GNC’s repeated themes about sinfulness and unworthiness are always “balanced” by reminders of God’s “love,” manifested by the opportunity that each child has, through submissive “belief” in the dogmas with which they are being indoctrinated, to be saved. Children are admonished that even though they are undeserving of love, Christ died and suffered on the cross for them, and so they owe God their worship and whole-hearted surrender. One GNC lesson text intones: “Do you love and honor Him for what He did for you? Because of the sin in our lives we are selfish, unkind, disobedient, always doing the things that are wrong instead of right. But the Lord Jesus gave his precious blood on the cross. Dying there, He was taking the punishment for our sins. We owe all that we are to Him.”
GNC’s dark emphases on sin, depravity and obedience are thoroughly Biblical and embraced by the evangelical mainstream. The concepts that all people are conceived in sin (Ps. 51:5), that “nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Rom. 7:18), that the natural self is so flawed as to have “become worthless” (Rom. 2:12), and “by nature [an] object[] of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) are pillars of evangelical doctrine.
