Book Banning and the Bible
Should the Bible Be on the Concerned Parent’s List?
I oppose the banning of books. However, since Americans have decided to ban books in schools, it begs the question, does the Bible qualify as inappropriate reading material for children?
A school district in Utah responded to parental concerns about the inappropriateness of leaving the Bible on the school bookshelves in elementary and middle school classrooms. It was removed. Of course, this triggered parents who love the Bible and want it to remain available to all ages who choose to read it. I couldn’t agree with them more. I don’t particularly love the Bible nor am I religious, but I do believe that anyone who chooses to read it should be able to do so. And while it’s not the most appropriate book for children, in my opinion, if a parent is fine with their child reading it, I can support that.
Let’s sort this out together. Shall we? Is the Bible appropriate for children to read?
I was raised on a heavy dose of the Bible and I can clearly remember being terrorized by its grim tales. I mean there hasn’t been a horror story written since then that can compete with its violence and macabre threats. End-of-the-world predictions, genocide, mass slayings of little children, incest, rape, weird practices, and unexplainable details that suggest perversions were shared with me from early childhood. However, because our culture said this old tome was holy, my parents did an evening read-aloud with me and my siblings, happily reading those deeply disturbing passages with utter disregard for our feelings or questions.
No plausible explanations were offered as to why these creepy stories were considered so valuable to my upbringing.
I couldn’t handle the story about God asking Abraham to kill his son to prove his love. Especially since I knew that modern-day parents really do abuse and kill their kids. That story did nothing for my sense of security.
Incest stories in the Bible produced the same reaction from me. I had an eery sense of WTF because I knew that within my radical, religious environment, incest was common.
Western culture seems to like these types of stories.
Many of our early fairy tales were pretty grim, too. The writers were called Brothers Grimm as well. I always thought that was weird. The story of Hansel and Gretel seemed creepy to me. Who would think that creating the character of an old woman living in the deep dark woods who enjoyed eating little children was a great bedtime story for children? The Grimm brothers, that’s who.
Our European ancestors had a strange notion about how to entertain children. Didn’t they?
Of course, maybe the church and the Holy Bible influenced the way we viewed children. If they were born in sin and needed saving from day one, then there’s not a lot that’s particularly precious about them is there? Nevertheless, the book-banning crowd has no problem with the Bible which is written in the style of our old fairy tales, violent, superstitious, threatening, and full of strange characters who do strange things.
Our culture of mistreating, terrorizing, beating, and punishing children without allowing them a voice goes way back.
I’ve often noticed that Americans are much more comfortable with violence than they are with sex. Have you ever noticed that? Many books are considered pornographic by those who want to ban books while violence is often better tolerated. So, the Bible has both violence and sex in it, lots of violence and sex, but it’s not considered inappropriate by the book banners.
Why is that? Could it be a culturally produced perception that results in such contradictory behaviors?
Humans are so weird. We’re products of a culture that we inherited through the sheer lottery of birth. From the time we draw our first breath, we’re indoctrinated to believe a bunch of nonsense as THE truth. All humans feel the same about their own cultural beliefs and expectations. It’s too bad. Because there is so much more to experience in life when we’re able and willing to open our minds to allow a ray of light to enter without falling to the ground with a grand mal seizure because we can’t handle a different perspective.
Alas, we’re living in modern times but humans remain ignorant and dangerous.
That said, here we are again. Banning books and wasting our time on things that don’t matter instead of concentrating on the real challenges the world is facing.
And here I am, sort of enjoying the opportunity afforded me to ask a question that might change perspectives. According to the book banner’s standards is the Bible appropriate for young children to read? Should the Bible be added to the book banner’s list? My conclusion?
Yes, a resounding yes. I rest my case.
But THEY don’t like it when someone wants to ban a book they haven’t censored. Oh, no. They’re suddenly irate and feel persecuted by society. They rise up to defend their rights, because secretly they believe that THEY alone should hold the power to determine what everyone else should be allowed to read, do, celebrate, and practice in their own personal lives. They’re religious dictators that if given the opportunity would destroy other people’s lives and control the world with punitive and hateful ideologies that place huge limits on what humans are allowed to think and create.
In the end, the world would suffer from the stifling of ideas and free thought. We would all look and think alike and progress would cease to happen.
Teresa is an author and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
