The children’s Bibles market is massive these days. Much like
other forms of children’s literature they have also gained a substantial adult
readership – especially Sally Lloyd-Jones’ The Jesus Storybook Bible -
and yet there is surprisingly little reflection on them.
A while back I spent some time researching them and then wrote
a review article for Themelios about two of the most popular: The Big
Picture Story Bible (BPSB) and The Jesus Storybook Bible (JSB) (available
here). I was
actually quite critical about The Jesus Storybook Bible and was advised
by friends to prepare for a backlash, given its popularity. That never came, I
suspect because my review was so painstakingly thorough that no one made it to
the end. Anyway, I was reminded of it the other day when someone highlighted this even more
negative review and so I thought I’d post some concluding highlights from my
review here:
Given this book's popularity, it
is worth repeating myself. The JSP does speak of God's anger at sin, but the
primary account of the human plight is that we are his children who doubt his
love rather than, in the terms of Rom 1:21, rebellious idolaters who refuse to
honour him as God or give thanks to him. In JSB we are clearly objects of
divine love, but it less clear that we are also objects of divine wrath (Eph
2:3). This creates something of a tension within the story bible. When Jesus
dies, "the full force of the storm of God's fierce anger at sin was coming
down" (306), but little of what comes before prepares us for that as the
fitting or necessary solution to the plight. As Justin Taylor writes, "My
one qualm is that it so emphasizes the (legitimate) biblical theme of God's
yearning/wooing love that the theme of judgment and wrath in the OT stories
tends to be muted; when the story comes to the cross, the readers have not
really been ‘set up' very well to understand the need for propitiation.” This
over-emphasis, as I have argued above, also pulls some of the OT stories and
the life and teaching of Jesus out of shape.
JSB aims to relate the stories of
the Bible to the larger story of salvation, and, more specifically, to show how
the OT narratives prefigure Christ's role in that salvation, hence The Jesus
Storybook Bible. It chooses the love of God for his children as the central
theme, which is certainly a more relational and dynamic choice than BPSB's
categories of people, place, and rule. Lloyd-Jones's talents as a storyteller
are clear, hence The Jesus Storybook Bible, as are Jago's as an
artist, and the same humour, depth, and richness suffuses both of their
efforts. JSB often artfully and movingly makes connections between OT passages
and their christological fulfilment. The stories, creatively retold, place the
emphasis as much on "storybook" as "bible," but JSB
brilliantly captures the drama, humour, and earthy reality of many of the
narratives. The emphasis on the unconditional love of God is well-deployed
against the thought that we might earn or lose it on account of how we look,
what we have, or what we do. On the other hand, its emphasis without sufficient
reference to God's authority or holiness creates a tension with JSB's clear
account of the wrath-bearing death of Jesus. The characterisation of humanity
principally as God's children deceived into thinking that God does not love
them makes the necessity of Jesus' death harder to integrate and the wonder of
it harder to grasp. It also shapes the account of Jesus' earthly ministry:
attractive in its beauty but hardly ever challenging in its authority, power,
or purity. For that reason I would want to use JSB more selectively and cannot
offer the unconditional endorsement that others often give it.