Would C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and the Apostle Paul Enjoy your Children's Bible Lessons?

Francis Schaeffer was a well known 20th century evangelical, theologian, philosopher, and pastor. He and his wife, Edith, founded the L’Abri community in Switzerland. Their daughter, Susan Schaeffer Macaulauy, authored a book called For the Children’s Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School, which was instrumental in bringing the ideas of 19th century educational philosopher and reformer, Charlotte Mason, to American homes. 

Still today, this book is often the metaphorical “gateway drug” to Charlotte Mason homeschooling. It is the “wardrobe” many enter to arrive in new educational lands. Though this book was not my personal entry point to Charlotte Mason philosophy, I still read it early on in my homeschooling journey. After many years, I have pulled the book off my shelf and have revisited it again.

A couple of quotes have struck me anew with this rereading; one of which I will muse upon in this post. Susan emphasizes the importance of the books we offer to our children having “literary power.” She then asks the thought-provoking question: 

“If C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, the Apostle Paul, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Carl Sandburg, for instance, should have the unlikely experience of being in a typical school for several days, would they find any enjoyment in the material read by and to the third grade? The sixth, eighth, eleventh grade? Would they be able to enjoy a relationship with fascinating growing persons? Would they enjoy the family’s reading before bed every evening? Or the conversation around the supper table? Would they perhaps be fascinated and stimulated by spending a month of Sundays in each Sunday school class, at each level? If not, why not?”¹

She caught my attention with this formidable list of literary giants, but what a compelling litmus test they serve for our modern day Sunday Schools. Anyone who has volunteered in a children’s ministry classroom as of late would probably laugh at the irony that these literary giants would be fascinated and stimulated with the materials we taught last Sunday. They might even squirm a bit to think about being responsible for teaching a Bible lesson to the next C.S. Lewis with the materials at hand. After posing this rhetorical question, Susan further asks her readers to consider why not. So, I am going to take a stab at answering why I think not. I think not primarily because the actual words of the Bible are not often read reverently to children, because their imaginations are not often engaged, and because poor substitutes are often offered in modern Bible curriculums to fill the remaining class time. 

Read the Actual Words of the Bible: 

If you read any of the works of these authors, it is obvious that Bible reading was foundational in their lives as the Bible undergirds their works of fiction, nonfiction, plays, poetry, and prose. Lewis and Tolkien, in particular, both felt passionate about disarming moderns with the gospel by engaging their imaginations through fantasy, all the while introducing Biblical threads throughout their stories. 

We love them for this and The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy will always have a cherished spot upon our bookshelves. However, masterpieces like these will only be accomplished when the Bible is the bedrock of one’s mind. How does the Bible become the bedrock of one’s mind? Well for starters, the actual words of the actual Bible should be read to children over and over again. Curriculum Bible passage summaries, Storybook Bibles, and watered down Bible lesson videos, are not enough to lay such a foundation.

A little later in the book, Susan goes on to say, “The Bible is literature, as well as history and truth about God and man.”² She tells of an experience her father had in the 1930’s where he interacted with simple people who never had a formal education. She says, “They still lived in simple cabins in the southern states of America. For the oldest ones, slavery was still a fairly recent memory. But Dad said that some of these persons were truly educated people in the true and wide sense. Why? They had read the Bible. The wholeness of this Book had educated them.”³ 

Let us not be guilty of depriving children of the wholeness of this book and replacing the living and active Word with dry as dust summaries. The same Word has been inspiring literary giants and simple folks alike for generations. May our generation not be the one where the rich and wide education that the Bible offers to all ceases, because we cease to read its Words beautifully and reverently to children. 

Engage Children’s Imaginations:

All of the men Susan listed in her question were known for their cultivated imaginations. Lewis, in particular, was a master at conveying deep concepts to a lay audience because as Pastor John Piper says, “his romanticism and rationalism were the paths on which he lived his life and did his work...thus he spent his life pointing people, even in his rigorous prose, beyond the world to the meaning of the world–Jesus Christ.”⁴ He would often publish a non-fiction work laying out a reasoned argument, like The Four Loves, and then subsequently publish a work of fiction, like Till We Have Faces, to illustrate his argument with a strong narrative. “Lewis argued at one point that, while reason is the natural organ of truth, ‘imagination is the organ of meaning.’ In other words, we do not really grasp the meaning of any word or concept until we have a clear image that we can connect with it.”⁵

This is why engaging children’s imaginations are so important as we are teaching the Bible to children. Think about a sermon you remember well. I would wager the reason it made such an impression upon you is that the preacher did a wonderful job of engaging your imagination, perhaps through a story you could hold on to which illustrated the point, or by setting up the context for the passage being read by helping you visualize the scene in your mind’s eye. Children do not need to be shallowly entertained, but they do need to be told the good narrative stories of Scripture that they can imagine, which will not only capture their attention, but will ultimately point them to God, who is the meaning behind the story. 

Karen Glass, a modern Charlotte Mason scholar, says, “In a world bombarded by images, however, I think imagination has a better chance to flourish if we cultivate a culture of words. Language gives us no visual images, which means we must produce our own. We use our minds to create mental pictures.”⁶ This is again why we focus on reading the appropriate narrative portions of Scripture to children, and where I believe my new Bible curriculum really shines because in addition to calling upon children to read and narrate the actual words of Scripture, the excerpts culled from Paterson Smyth’s Bible for School and Home Series, call upon this power by inviting children to imagine the scene in their mind’s eye. 

Set a Wide Feast:

Finally, I think these men of renown would not be fascinated or stimulated by our Sunday Schools because of the poor substitutes we often offer in modern Bible curriculums to fill the remaining class time. My experience teaching from modern Bible curriculums has gone something like this. After working my way through how I am supposed to teach the Bible lesson, I now have the frustrating experience of deciding how to fill the remainder of the class time. Most of the ideas given in the curriculum for the games are too babyish, too time consuming to prepare and explain, or would take five minutes to play and then what? Looking at the list of recommended crafts is a likewise frustrating experience. They are often complicated and expensive and the point of them is to provide yet another opportunity to drill the main takeaway into the child’s head.  So, what normally happens, is that I plan to linger as long as I can over the coloring sheet, count on a few bathroom breaks to pass the time, and generally plan to let the children play while I babysit. Not very stimulating or fascinating for the boy Lewis or our beloved poets, and I am sure we might even receive a hard letter from the Apostle Paul in rebuke were he still laboring among churches today. Can anyone else relate? Are there any alternatives? Yes! Just as we want to set a feast of God’s Word before children through the main dish of the Bible lesson, there are worthier side dishes to set upon the table which as Anne Shirley says, provides much more “scope for the imagination.”⁷ 

We can teach the children our hymns of the faith, read poetry for them to enjoy, work on memorizing passages of Scripture together, practice reciting deep truths beautifully, take them outside to soak up Creation, or bring outside to them by having them observe an object from nature and record their findings in a nature journal. We can tell them stories of the saints in church history, who surround them as a great cloud of witnesses. We can teach them to work with their hands and bless others with a purposeful handicraft that they labor on from week to week. We can learn about the lives of people around the world and pray for them, as well as those brothers and sisters in Christ who minister among them. We can even play organized games where they can exercise their God-given bodies. We can do all of these things and more because as Colossians 1:16-17 tell us, “all things were created through Him and for Him and in Him all things hold together.”

This is my best stab at answering Susan’s question of why I think C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, the Apostle Paul, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Carl Sandburg would not be fascinated and stimulated by spending a month of Sundays in our Sunday School classrooms. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Have you had similar experiences volunteering in a modern Sunday School classroom or dissimilar? Leave a comment and let me know! And if you are looking for an alternative, head to my shop, and check out something new on the menu, that is really a time-honored staple for all generations.

Endnotes:

1. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, For The Children’s Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School (Crossway, 1984), 113. 

2. Macaulay, For The Children’s Sake, 113. 

3. Macaulay, For The Children’s Sake, 113. 

4. John Piper, 21 Servants of Sovereign Joy: Faithful, Flawed, and Fruitful (Crossway, 2018), 695. 

5. Art Lindsley, “The Importance of Imagination for C.S. Lewis and for Us,” C.S. Lewis Institute Knowing & Doing (2001): 1-3, https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/KD-2001-Summer-The-Importance-of-Imagination-for-C.S.-Lewis-and-f-277.pdf. 

6. Karen Glass, Much May Be Done With Sparrows: A Charlotte Mason Chapbook Volume 1 (Self-published, 2024), 30. 

7. Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (L.C. Page & Co, 1908).