Every once in a while I read a bed-time story my son Maxim. \u00a0For those of you who don’t know him, is five and a half years old now. \u00a0Today he, as usual, got ready for bed, picked the book to read, and was waiting for me. \u00a0When I walked into the room, I got confused for a second, but decided to go with it. \u00a0The book of the day – My First Bible. \u00a0I won’t link to it, because I don’t recommend it, and if you don’t care about my recommendation you probably already have it anyway.<\/p>\n
Now, the thing is that I don’t believe in religion. \u00a0I don’t believe in bible. \u00a0And I don’t believe in church. \u00a0But on the other hand, I don’t want to limit Maxim’s options – it’s up to him if he wants to believe it or not. \u00a0And given that we live in country where religion is important and is all around us, he at least has the right to know.<\/p>\n
Anyway, we started reading. \u00a0The first story was from the old testament and it was about The Garden of Eden. \u00a0Maybe it was an oversimplified version of the story, or maybe the story is getting old, or maybe it has something to do with Maxim spending large chunk of his free time watching YouTube videos and playing Lego. \u00a0But he missed the meaning of the first couple of paragraphs, so we went back. \u00a0And the we got into this conversation which made reading the book a real pain. \u00a0It went something like this:<\/p>\n
– At first, there was nothing. \u00a0Nothing to see, nothing to touch, nothing to hear. \u00a0It was dark, empty, and cold. \u00a0Then god created light.<\/p>\n
– Dad, who is god?<\/p>\n
– Well, you see, it’s this guy. \u00a0As it says here, it was like a very dark room before – nothing to see, etc. This guy called god switched the light on.<\/p>\n
– Ah, OK. \u00a0 But where did he come from? \u00a0There was nothing …<\/p>\n
– Ehm … I don’t know. Let’s read further, maybe the story will explain.<\/p>\n
– OK.<\/p>\n
It didn’t. \u00a0It just got even more confusing. \u00a0We agreed on god being a gardener, because he created a garden and a whole bunch of things in it. \u00a0We got a bit surprised by god working on Saturday, because nobody works or is supposed to work during the weekend. \u00a0And then we came across the apples. \u00a0Apples are supposed to be “good for you”, as per Maxim’s food classes in the kindergarten. \u00a0So, if not apples, what else was there to eat? \u00a0And then how come you get smart from eating apples? \u00a0You need to study at school and read books to become smart. \u00a0Apples have nothing to do with it. \u00a0And then there was this snake, which was created by god also, as part of everything else – what was the snakes problem? \u00a0And then they ate the apples and god got angry with them and kicked them out of the garden. \u00a0So where did they go?<\/p>\n
Maxim probably didn’t ask some of these questions, but asked some of the others that I forgot, but one thing is for sure – there were a lot of questions and a lot of the story didn’t make sense. \u00a0But we managed to finish it.<\/p>\n
I didn’t want to leave him puzzled and confused, so we decided to also read the next story. \u00a0That one was about Noah’s Ark. \u00a0That one was much simpler in plot, but way more horrifying. \u00a0For no particular reason god decided to kill everyone and everything on the planet, except for this Noah guy and his family, who he made to build a ship, which he wanted to host a pair of each living creature and enough food for them. \u00a0How big was the ship, how much food did they all need, and why not get rid of\u00a0mosquitoes\u00a0and angry dogs at this stage remained uncertain. \u00a0The idea of killing everyone for no apparent reason seemed like a silly thing to read for the bed time. \u00a0So I closed the book, turned everything into a joke, and convinced Maxim that it was all a bad fairy tale and that none of this is real. \u00a0We played some Lego after that, talked about Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and I left him to that.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard quite a few people joking about introducing bible stories to kids<\/a> before. \u00a0But I never thought that those jokes might be so close to reality. \u00a0But, of course, don’t forget that I am biased.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n