BACK TO SCHOOL with God’s Cosmic Cookbook
It always bugs me to hear the faith of youngsters being challenged along the lines ‘They can’t be proper Christians if they don’t accept Genesis 1 ‘literally’’… i.e. unless they’re prepared to accept that creation happened about 6000 years ago, following a strict 6-day timeline and with no hint of evolution!
As our children / grandchildren and their teachers look forward to a new academic year – are we doing enough to defend the young people we know against attacks like this before the issue becomes an enormous stumbling block for them? Is it something we ever talk about?
I know I’ve mentioned it several times before, but in a nutshell, the problem is that children are often given Bible stories in a church context and science text books in school and nothing in between… When this happens, God and science can seem completely unrelated, making young people vulnerable to the idea they have to choose. Similarly, it’s much harder to convince unchurched children that Bible stories aren’t just myths unless someone explains that they are there to address different questions – who God is, what God’s like and our relationship with God – things beyond the scope of science.
Thankfully, there are now more and more resources available to show children how scripture and the Christian faith sit comfortably alongside modern science – both answering different, important questions. My own book God’s Cosmic Cookbook is part of this, together with its associated draft teaching resources, but a library of other material and a number of excellent course and workshop opportunities are also available.
Check out the ‘Other useful resources’ page on this website and download the new draft teaching materials for God’s Cosmic Cookbook.
