Episode 63: Mariko Clark – Helping Kids Grow an Expansive Faith

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Jared: Today on Faith for Normal People, I’m here with my co-host, Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, and we’re talking about the Bible at a kid’s level with Mariko Clark.

Jennifer: Mariko is a Japanese-American author, mother, and storyteller on a mission to help kids embrace diversity and wonder.

She’s also the author of The Book of Belonging: Bible Stories for Kind and Contemplative Kids. 

Jared: Don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time, during which we’re gonna reflect on this conversation. So, let’s dive in. 

Mariko: What I want my kids to experience is not necessarily something radically different from the way that I was raised in certain ways, for sure.

Like, there’s things that I want them to, to never learn about, but I think I want them to have an understanding and experience with God that is more expansive than what I experienced.

Jared: All right, well, welcome Mariko to the podcast. It’s wonderful to have you. 

Mariko: Thank you. I’m so thrilled to be here. I’ve been a huge fan of your work and Pete’s work for a while now. And obviously Jennifer and I have gotten to know each other over the past few years, so I’m excited to be here. 

Jared: Absolutely. And we’re a fan of your work too.

So let’s jump in and talk about, uh, a little bit about your background. ’cause uh, I, I think it’d be interesting when we’re talking about, you know, kind and contemplative kids, that raises the question of. What kind of kid were you? Were you kind and contemplative? No, just kidding. We’re not gonna go there.

You can say if you want, but, uh, can you say a little bit about your just spiritual upbringing and in particular, how did your parents talk to you about the Bible when you were growing up? So maybe your spiritual bio through the lens of how you were taught to read the Bible and taught what it was and, and what you were supposed to do with it.

Mariko: I don’t know if I was a kind and contemplative kid. I think I was contemplative, uh, I was spicy, and that plays into this story in certain ways. Um, so my parents became Christians when I was like five or six. We were sort of, my dad’s Japanese, my mom’s Irish. So we were sort of non-religious or, like, nominally Irish Catholic, um, for most of my childhood.

And then, yeah, my parents became Christians. And for, you know, for a kid that feels more like a cultural shift than anything. It’s like all of a sudden as a 5-year-old, like there’s certain words I’m not allowed to say anymore, and certain words I should be saying, or like our Sunday mornings look different in the ways that we gather as a family or the people we associate with feels a little different.

Um, and, and as far as, like, learning about the Bible, the church that my parents joined, in, in retrospect, I can say it was fundamentalist at the time. I certainly didn’t know that, and I don’t know if it’s, um, being a New Englander or being fundamentalist or being both, but, um, we were, I felt like we were, the Bible was this tool for playing defense against sort of like an inhospitable environment.

So it felt like we were sort of being trained to be these little soldiers in, you know, this liberal New England area, and it was very cerebral. Um, like we did a lot of apologetics even really, really early on, like the sword drills and, um, memorizing the Bible. I read the Reformed Doctrine of Predestination when I was 11.

Like I had this massive book and I, I could barely lift it with my little noodle arms just thrown on the table to read it. It involved a lot of, I would say, cognitive ascent to, um, a certain set of beliefs more than I feel like what I’ve moved into since then. It feels a little bit more embodied. Um, it, it involves more, I would say, an expansive experience as far as emotional and physical.

It was, like, completely a mental experience with God. Learning, memorizing and agreeing was, was the extent of it. And I think that served me in a lot of ways. Like I say that the gift that Fundamentalism gave me, or at least one of them, is just like this, this deep respect for study and, um, like a certain level of nerdiness that just for me was assumed in a spiritual life was like, well, you study, you, you read all the books, you fill your shelf with books and, um, as as many as you can get your hands on.

And I, and I do feel like that has served me well in, in the work that I’ve done. But certainly had its limits and has its limits. 

Jennifer: So, Mari, I’m wondering then, um, as you have kids today, now mm-hmm. What kind of choices are you making to make sure that they sort of have a different experience with the Bible when you talk to them about the Bible or teach them the Bible?

Mariko: Yeah. I’m always really careful in the language that I choose around this. Um, I think it can feel really easy to sort of talk about it as, like, tossing out the way that things were done in my family and replacing it with something shiny and better and um, more evolved. And I’ve come to feel like that sort of binary is not exactly helpful.

Um, I like to use the term expansive. What I, what I want my kids to experience is not necessarily something radically different from the way that I was raised in certain ways, for sure. Like there’s things that I want them to, to never learn about, but I think I want them to have an understanding and experience with God that is more expansive than what I experienced.

And my whole goal with the Book of Belonging wasn’t necessarily to be like, Hey, all these books on your bookshelf, toss ’em out. This is the end all, be all. Like, I’ve done it. I’ve, I’ve done it. Everyone. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve made the final Bible storybook. Uh, it was more this effort to sort of just, like, crack open some doors and windows and, and let a little bit of, um, light into the situation.

And maybe a better metaphor is to just introduce my kids and my friend’s kids and, and the kids that I love to a sort of tent that is just bigger. A, a bigger tent to house, um, experience for God and language for God and imagery for God. My husband and I often talk about, like, the thing behind the thing that, um, as we’re raising our kids, one thing that we keep drilling down into is we want you to understand what’s behind the rules. We want you to understand what’s behind these stories. We want you to understand what’s behind these guidelines, because my husband and I were both from Christian families and we went to a Christian college and we’ve been involved in church our whole life.

So we, we have community, we have friends, we have family all along this, like, theological or ecumenical spectrum? I was raised fundamentalists. My in-laws are Pentecostal. We have lots of evangelical friends and, and you know, we tend to skew progressive. So with my kids, we do, we bump into a lot of questions about like, well, they’re allowed to say that and we’re not, or, you know, they, they’re not allowed to celebrate Halloween in this way.

Or, uh, and we are, or we engage with politics in this way and our friends don’t seem to, and as we’re, we’re fielding those questions. It can be, it could be so easy. And I think that this, um, is something I’d like to do different from fun fundamentalism is it would be so easy to be like that right over there, the way that they’re doing it wrong, the way that we’re doing it, correct.

It’s one or the other. And these people in your community have chosen wrong and they are, you know, foolish or less informed or less evolved than us. And I think it can be really easy to do that with our kids because, especially ’cause kids think that way. They’re so black and white and they’re like, so they’re the good guys and we’re the bad guys, or we’re the bad guys and they’re the good guys.

Um, and the challenge and the, the, the joy for us, I think is, is leaning into it with our kids. And I don’t think we’ve had it completely figured out and talking about people who love God, and this is a line directly from the Book of Belonging. Like people who love God believe very, very different things about X or like if we’re talking about a Bible story or if we’re talking about a holiday, or we’re talking about a theological or ideological belief.

Just making expansive space for that and saying like, Hey, actually there, there’s a lot of different ways to think about this and here’s why Dad and I have arrived at this place. And the thing behind the thing is, and we almost always bring it back to, it’s like, we want you to love people well. We want you to love yourself and your body well and we want you to love your neighbor well.

And like, we’ve made this choice. ’cause we, that’s the best way we know how to guide you into that thing. Um. Depending on the topic, sometimes it’s like, you know, we’re following the way of Jesus and this is the example that Jesus set and that’s why we’re gonna do it this way. Um, so it is, it is tricky.

It’s a tricky question and it’s a tricky, it’s a tricky journey being a parent in this day and age and, and navigating that when our kids have so much access to people who are different from them, which is such a joy and such a challenge all at once, every day, all the time. 

Jared: Well, I appreciate the way you’re, you’re talking about it and sort of how do we steer family conversations from around these binaries?

Uh, it’s either this or it’s that, the good versus the bad. How do you navigate that with your kids around also having convictions around things? So how do you, how do you steer clear of the, this is, you know, we’re not necessarily gonna call that good or bad or right or wrong, while also having convictions about things that are definitely right or wrong or pursuing things that we feel are, are better than other things. How do you navigate that? Uh, how do you navigate that circumstance? 

Mariko: Oh, yeah. That is, it’s so challenging and I, I, I don’t presume to have the answer on that. I think the, the way that we have navigated it, and I hope what I’ve, um, sort of laid out in the Book of Belonging is this sort of idea that faith.

Um, and relationship with the divine is something that’s growing right, like anyone we’re in a relationship with, as we get to know them, we can trust them more. Um, trust goes, grows in relationship, and relationships grow through trust, and I hope that as. I’m walking alongside my kids through life. I’m introducing them to a God who is very trustworthy and that that’s my first role as a parent.

Hopefully, as they get older and they reach an age where they’re able to grapple with the nuance of certain situations and with their own convictions, that then I’m setting them up for like, Hey, actually, now that you’re eleven, we can talk about some of the layers to this story, or we can talk about some of the nuance in this situation.

And I, I hope it creates, um. Uh, uh, flexible feels like the wrong word, but the opposite of like this, this small and brittle understanding of God that doesn’t pass those sort of like developmental faith tests that if I can, if I can create a space for them to have their own trusting relationship with God, if at the core of their beliefs they believe that God is for them, God is good and trustworthy, that then they able are able to have this resiliency to move through some of those really tough life questions and faith questions in these really complex situations where they are gonna have to develop their own convictions, that hopefully the bedrock for them is this trusting relationship with God that is able to bend and grow with them. Um, and I think a big part of that is letting them know that their faith will change as they grow that questions, that God loves questions, questions are welcome.

And that, that, I think that is where, that’s what I was missing growing up was this idea that. Not only are questions okay, but they’re encouraged. Like, um, in the Book of Belonging, we tell the story of, um, Jacob wrestling with God. And this idea that not only does it happen, but it’s encouraged, like God is inviting God’s people into this sort of wrestling, um, interaction over the course of history.

That God’s people are never discouraged from engaging with their, with their whole body and their whole mind and their whole emotion with God and to be able to say, Hey, this doesn’t make sense, and, or, I’m, I’m really angry, or I’m grieving. And like, we see these, these timeless Bible characters coming full force into their conversations with God and, and wrestling, and I hope that we, I’m setting an example for my kids that like, hey, you probably will have really strong feelings at some point towards God, and they might not all be perfectly positive. 

You will have questions and some of those questions I can answer for you. Some of those questions I can give you sort of like all of the expert opinions and we can sort of chat as you get older about, like, what, what is resonating with you and what feels true of the character of God and what, um, feels true in your experience with God. 

Um, but then there’s some questions that really just don’t have answers, and we get to engage with the mystery and the wonder of it. And that is actually a good thing. And I think that that’s something that’s fairly new to a lot of parents. This idea that questioning and mystery and wrestling is actually good and productive and positive, and not a sign of some sort of shortcoming or failure or, um, like a watered down version of relationship with God.

That, um, you can be theologically, you can have theological conviction and still have this sort of, um, flexible, humble, open engagement to, I probably am wrong about some of this. I hope I’m wrong. Can you imagine if you had figured it all out at like the age of 11 and then just stuck with that your whole life?

What kind of God would you be worshiping if it fit into your 11-year-old brain? At least that’s how I try to think about it. 

Jared: My brain was pretty big at 11, Mariko. Okay?

Mariko: No big deal. But for those of us with normal sized brains, that’s my concern. 

Jennifer: But I, I love the idea of looking at these Bible stories, um, with a framework of God’s character and like a relationship with God.

And I wonder how that shaped the way you told your, the stories in the Bible and also what were the challenges that you faced as you told these stories? 

Mariko: As I was writing the stories, that was one of my main pillars, like something that I was always coming back to was, um, as opposed to, I think there’s a lot of resources for kids out there that wanna kind of wrap up each story with like this tidy moral lesson or, um, this, uh, way to be more like that hero character that makes a hero out of the characters.

And it’s like, well, you can have faith like Jacob if you do A, B, and C, but we wanted to approach it with the idea of, what do each of these stories say about who God is and what does it teach our kids about who God says that they are? Because I think that, um, I’m of the belief that I, our, our sense of identity often informs our actions.

And that if we, if we can sit in the identity of someone who is beloved of God and belongs with God, um, and is delightful to God, then you know, humans have this tendency to live up to what’s spoken over us. Like we see this in countless theological or not theological, psychological studies that, like, if you tell a kid, you tell a group of children like, you know this, this math problem is too hard for you, you’re not gonna be able to do it. They don’t perform as well on the test. 

But if you say like, you guys have got this, this is like super, this is super easy stuff. Like we’re just, we’re just checking to make sure you know it.

They perform really well. And I think that that’s true across the board with kids, that what we speak over them and what we, um, the, the names that we call them and what we say that God believes about them, they live up to that. And I think it’s true of humans. So if we’re telling them, you know, God, God has this posture of benevolence and delight towards you, of course you’re gonna act out of that. 

But if, if we’re telling kids from the jump, you’re actually broken and God sees you as, as this, uh, disappointment who is worthy of nothing but punishment. And it’s only because Jesus is standing in the way that you are not receiving the full wrath of God for this like dirty brokenness that you are.

People, we act out of that, we act out of shame, we act out of striving. Um, and I just don’t think it’s conducive for growth or, or trust when you’re, especially for a kid who is just being introduced to God. I just even imagine in any relationship, you introduce yourself, you introduce a kid to a new friend in your life.

And if, if you’re telling them from the jump that, Hey, this person was excited to meet you, this person is, um, thinks that you’re awesome. It’s gonna foster this, like, really wonderful relationship. But if you tell them like, Hey, this person didn’t, I would like you to meet so-and-so. They don’t really like you.

But, uh, I think if you get to know them, it’ll probably be good for you. That makes it a little bit trickier. And I think that, um, our actions as humans, but especially for kids who are so malleable, um, in their sense of identity, I think that that is such a crucial, um, sort of lifeline in all of the stories for us was letting them know this is what, who God says that God is.

This is what God says about you. And to tell the story from that perspective was one of our constants through writing the book. I think the hardest challenge with that was just trying to nail that balance between, um, knowing that kids can grasp a certain amount of nuance through imaginative thinking, but that kids don’t quite do as well with abstract thinking.

Like it’s a really, really tricky balance. Um, the best way I can illustrate it is, uh, a story about my own kid actually. Um, one of my kids, she’s six, she had surgery this past summer and she was really nervous. She was gonna have to go under general anesthesia. Um, and we were trying to prep her beforehand and try to explain to her like, you’re gonna be with us in the room and they’re actually gonna wheel you away from us and take you to a different area and then they’ll put you to sleep. 

We were kind of hoping that they would put her to sleep first and then once the doctor explained it to us, we’re like, we really gotta prep her. ’cause she’s like a really attached kid. Um, and so we were trying to tell her like, but you know that God is always with you.

And I think there’s a way we could have, um, tried to get her there with abstract thinking and to say like, you know, God is omnipresent and that’s a really big word that means that God is everywhere at once. Kind of like the air, But she’s six. I think maybe she could sort of. Get there with, with us. But really, like we know through Piaget theory that kids can’t really grasp a certain level of nuance until about the age of 11.

So I’m like, she’s a smart kid, but she’s not there yet. So instead we talked to her about, um, there’s this illustration in the Book of Belonging where Rachel had illustrated God, um, as this glittery golden eagle figure in a couple of the stories. My kid just kinda latched onto that and she had always really loved those stories.

So we, um, she had had some trouble at school getting on the school bus earlier in the year and we had, um, talked a lot about that image and I would tell her, um, I get really choked up when I talk about this. I would tell her like, when the school bus pulls away and I’m at the school. I’m at the bus stop waving to you.

Something that makes me feel really good is I picture this golden eagle flying over the bus, just like in the book, that one picture you like, and that’s God going with you. And I picture God’s wings being so big that they’re going bigger than the school bus. And so she was able to be really playful with that and imaginative with that.

Um, and say like, but what about when I go into school? So we’d joked about how, well then the eagle shrinks down so they can fly over you and go through the hallways at school. And so she had always really loved that imagery and felt, um, we’d come home and tell me, like, I, I prayed to God when I was scared today.

Like it really stuck with her and seemed to resonate with her. So her, for her surgery, we said like, remember that like. When God, when, when you’re wheeled away from us, we’re gonna picture that eagle flying over you. Right. Um, and she could go there with us. She could imagine that she could imagine God flying over her hospital bed.

And I think that if, if we were raising her in the sort of like, um, literalist fundamental faith that I was raising, we couldn’t. God isn’t literally an eagle, right? We couldn’t give her that sort of language to meet her there in that situation where she could experience God with her. Um, but to be able to give her that imagery and then she was able to echo back to us like, yeah, I’m gonna picture God as a yellow eagle and dad’s a blue eagle and you’re a red eagle.

Like she had this whole picture. She was able to draw it for us and it was amazing. She was so comforted. She went off to her surgery. No problem. And I think that really delicate balance right there is, what was really hard to strike when I was writing the stories was knowing there’s a certain amount of creative liberty that I am willing to take to get kids to this experience with God, to get kids to this trusting relationship with God.

And I wanna lean into that imaginative thinking that comes so naturally to kids and really what I think is at the heart of Jesus, talking about having the faith of a child without, um, leaning so far into it that I am, um, you know, kind of treading on people’s understanding or, um, definition of what feels sacred or even nostalgic.

And that’s a really tricky line to tread when you’re talking about Bible stories. And, you know, I’m comfortable, um, sort of following in this tradition of midrash, of like, you know, I’m telling this story to make this this moral guideline and this sort of like, um. This, this point that leads to faithful interaction.

Um, but knowing that not everyone in my audience could necessarily go there with me, I think that was the trickiest part, was to sort of balance what I know will help lead to engagement and trust in kids with, um, knowing that their caregivers and their parents who are reading these stories have a certain level of comfortability with that engagement, if that makes sense.

Jared: “What Is God Like?” comes first. And then that becomes a filter by which you choose these stories and these interpretations. And I think for some people they’ll be uncomfortable with that of sort of like, well, why are you, who makes you the arbiter of kinda what goes in and what goes out, but at the same time, we see that in the Bible itself. 

And so it, it reflects the idea. You know, when I think of even Samuel, Kings, which are these historical books, they are telling a certain story about who God is and how God acts. Um, and that’s what we find in our Bible, especially in the Hebrew Bible, our stories through the lens of, what kind of God is this? How does God act? 

It’s very theologically filtered and theologically mm-hmm. Motivated. So in some ways I don’t see you doing it any different. You’re in the biblical tradition in that way. How, how do you, did, were you thinking of that as you were writing this and, and going through the process?

Mariko: Yeah. When I started writing the book, I was in a huge, uh, like. Hebrew Bible, uh, Hebrew mindset, nerdy phase. Um, I had gotten really into the BEMA Discipleship podcast. I don’t know if either of you’re fans, but-

Jared: Yeah, we’ll edit this out because you just mentioned another podcast on this podcast.

Mariko: So a huge mistake on my part.

Um, but you know, Marty certainly engages with the text with that sort of, um, Hebraic mindset and reading the stories through, um, that lens. And that was certainly on my mind and heart, especially as I was writing the Old Testament. But even, you know, moving into the New Testament and this idea that, you know, Jesus would have had that mindset as well.

Like, Jesus was Jewish, Jesus had this like Jewish posture towards the text and this Jewish posture towards truth and this Eastern mindset of how do we engage with truth in a way that is dynamic and not static? And how do we tell these stories in a way that, um, is subversive even to our own understanding and our own beliefs?

And I think that there’s something really powerful about participating in that with that same posture. Um, but it certainly has not been without its critics. And I guess, you know, I guess we’re in good company with that as well. 

Jared: Let’s maybe move away from the critics and move back to the parents for a minute.

So what were, what are some of the concerns? Because I think for a lot of our listeners and just a lot of people as their faith transitions from maybe the tradition they grew up with to something else, they don’t really have an understanding of how to introduce the Bible to their kids. So what are often the concerns of parents when it comes to introducing their children to the Bible and theology?

‘Cause I think what I, um, I’m sad to hear sometimes is that, uh, parents just end up not introducing their kids to the Bible because they don’t wanna do it wrong. So what are some of those concerns and maybe how do you see, uh, maybe being able to overcome those concerns? 

Mariko: I would say the vast majority of the messages that Rachel and I get are from parents saying, um, I bought this book for my kid and then I kept it for myself. I say, and a word that is continually used is healing. Um, and I think that the reason that it feels so healing to parents is because it’s, it’s sort of, um, affirming this, this intuitive sense that I think so many of us have had that like, oh, there was more to this.

There is, there is a more expansive understanding of God. Like it wasn’t, I wasn’t crazy when I was growing up that I felt like maybe there was more to the story or I wasn’t, um, I wasn’t being overly sensitive when I felt a little cringey at this one part, or I, it wasn’t crazy to me that I didn’t wanna read Noah’s Ark to my three-year-old.

Like there’s, I think it’s been really affirming to parents that like, oh, this, this ick that I feel is legitimate and there’s a reason behind it and it’s not just me, you know, becoming soft or becoming too woke. I think that parents are very reassured that like, not only is that valid, but also that there is, I don’t wanna say a better way, like we’re talking about the binary, but there is a different way and there are more than what we tried to do, especially with some of the more, um, tricky concepts, like even, um, like atonement theory was not like, Hey, most of the story bibles out there engage with atonement theory, like pretty much only through a penal substitutionary atonement lens. 

We tried to acknowledge that there are, you know, at least nine atonement theories that I know about and to sort of like, um, hint at each one of them or like give a nod to each one of those.

Um, to give parents, we really just wanna equip parents to engage with their kids in a way that feels really life giving for their family. ‘Cause there’s some, there’s different kinds of families, like they’re sweet and spicy families and you know, some families can go there and they can have these really hard conversations, really young.

And they’ve got kids who are curious and who are wanting to hear these really hard truths and who are wanting to engage with some of the trickiness in the text. And then there’s other families that like their kids aren’t gonna be able to go there until they’re a little bit older. Maybe they’re, they’re highly sensitive kids, or maybe they’re these deep feelers who, who need some time to grow in their trust and relationship with God before they’re ready to engage with some of that trickiness. 

And so what we wanted to do wasn’t necessarily to like, you know, lay, lay down the law, um, and be like, you can’t do it this way. Here’s the new way. But to kind of just equip parents to move their kids into that space when they feel ready.

And I think the thing that we hear overwhelmingly from parents is, like you said, I just don’t wanna do it wrong. Like, I deconstructed three years ago. How do I give my kids a faith that they won’t then have to deconstruct later? I think the sad truth is that, like, the same as so many of us are in therapy and we’re like, how do I keep my kids from going to therapy someday?

And all of our therapists are being like, you can’t, like, that’s the whole thing is like you will mess up like you are human. No one’s perfect. Um, but I think that in the same way that a therapist would probably say like, you know. There’s gonna be a rip in relationship with your kid because you are human.

But the thing that we know from psychology is that the, the repair is more important than the rip. And I would say it’s similar theologically that like, we are all gonna mess up. We’re gonna say something that horrifies our kids. We’re gonna say something that, like, messes with their understanding of God.

It’s inevitable; we’re human. But we do, we get the opportunity to engage with them and to, to provide them these, these stories and these moments that either repair in the moment, that create this sort of soft place to land or create this, um, sort of like web of family engagement that then in the future the kids aren’t on their own deconstructing and feeling like they had this, this brittle thing that fell apart, that was handed to them, and then they were stuck with it.

It fell apart, and now they’re left alone. It’s this, in this, hopefully creating this environment where questions are welcomed and growth is welcome, and brokenness is welcome and um, parents can feel equipped to go into these stories without the fear of I’m handing them something that will fall apart someday.

And I think a huge part of that is just normalizing “I don’t know.” And normalizing questions and normalizing wonder and mystery, um, that like when that is all normalized, it just creates a much more, um, friendly and flexible environment for families to explore what is like a very nuanced and complicated and layered tradition and, and book. 

Jennifer: So, Mari, I first encountered you, it’s been a while now. I think it’s been like three or four, four years, and it was because I saw your Kickstarter. That was like the first time I saw you. And I remember being really struck by the way that you leaned into women’s voices and you, that was something that, that your sort of vision, um, for the Book of Belonging was kind of based on, and I, I wanna kind of hear your story again about how you got to that place where you thought we need to, we need to have more women in here. 

Mariko: Yeah. Well, so as you know then, Jennifer, the, it started with my daughter.

I feel like so many projects in, in, in pieces of art that I love start with someone’s kids. Um, and I think it’s because as parents, like, nothing galvanizes us into action quicker than like this sort of, um, holy rage of our, our kids not having what they need. Um, and so it started, yeah, maybe four years ago now.

Um, my daughter who at the time was just learning to read, um, sort of hit me outta nowhere with this question. She’s like, mom, does God love boys more than God loves girls? And I’m like, what? Where did this come from? Like, I raised you to be a feminist. Like where is this coming from? Um, and she went on to say that her, uh, the story Bible that we had at home had only two girl stories as she called them, and that the rest were boys stories.

I did that thing that we always do as parents, and I was like, whatever, you’re exaggerating. And just sort of, like, moved on with my life, went back home and just couldn’t shake it. And I went and I flipped through this little story bible we had at home. And sure enough, she was right. There was only two.

And so I was kind of shocked. Um, so I did what any normal person would do and I just ordered the top eight story Bibles off of Amazon. I’m like, I’ll find a better one. Um, and then I went through them page by page by page with a little sticky note and I kept a tally of how many of the stories had a, a female main character, how many of them had a female mentioned somewhere in the story, and I mean, like I was using like wife, mother, like really anything would pass as a mention, not just names. 

Um, and then I took a tally on how many pages had a female depicted, um, just in the illustration. And I was looking in the crowds, like I was, like, searching with a little magnifying glass, Jesus speaking to the crowds and even being as like, I don’t know, progressive to use the labels as I was at the time, I was still really shocked at the stats.

Only 7% of the stories had a female main character on average, I think I’m saying the stats correctly, 19% had a female mention and 23%, had a female depicted. Um, and this was out of the top eight story Bibles on Amazon at the time. Things have changed and some really wonderful products have come out. 

But at the time, and I just, I couldn’t believe it. So I sort of, sort of, um, as I was reading through these stories and keeping my tallies, it was like this thread I couldn’t stop pulling at. I’m like, okay, well, you know, while I’m looking for some more female stories for my daughters to see and my son, um, you know, I’d really love if I could find some stories that weren’t just sort of centered around morality. 

You know, while I’m at it, I’ll see if maybe they have some contemplative practices for kids. And while I’m at it, I would love to see if we could get a brown Jesus up in here and not just like blonde Jesus, blonde angels. Um, and one thing after another, and I just, I, I couldn’t, I got to the point where I was kind of like, all right, fine, I’ll just do it myself.

It was one of those things that, you know, I thought this is something that I really want for my kids. And once I mentioned it to a few friends, they wanted it for their kids and it’s just been this really beautiful and affirming and resounding “me too” over the past four, four years of just, and it’s been this really wonderful journey between in, in my relationship with God too, thinking like, okay, well I’ll do this thing and then, no, it’s bigger than that.

No, it’s bigger than that. No, it’s bigger than that. And it’s just been really cool to just sort of be like, honestly, drop kicked through so many doors that I just, uh, was sort of hesitant to or just didn’t think were for me. 

It’s just been like this really incredible journey and surprising in the very best of ways how many people are in the same place that I was and we’re looking for exactly what I was and who have been touched and excited about the project.

Jared: As we, uh, finish up our time here, you mentioned the, the word contemplative, and we haven’t talked much about that. Yeah. Can you, can you say more about what, what you mean by contemplative? That may be a new, even new phrase for some people. And how does it connect to both your faith and the faith you want to pass to your kids?

Like what’s the contemplative aspect of all this? 

Mariko: Sure. So I would define contemplative practices as practices of solitude, silence, or stillness. Um, I had first started incorporating, um, meditation into my spiritual practice in 2017 or so. Um, I was in a season of grief and it’s, it was the most, um, mystical, I guess like experiential, um, spiritual practice I had ever had.

And just the value of it in my life. I couldn’t imagine raising kids without, um, giving them those tools. I think especially in the fast-paced world that we live in, carving out intentional spaces for kids to experience solitude, to experience silence and stillness. Like so many of us, but especially our kids, are just not getting that in, in the technological world.

Um, I think that if we want to create a resilient faith in our kids, if we want them to be engaging with critical thinking, um, in faith resources, like we have to give them space to do that, to move things from their head down into their heart and into their bodies to create this, um, resilient experience.

And so throughout the Book of Belonging, in order to build in sort of that, those contemplative practices, we have what we call mindful moments at the end of some of the stories, just giving kids space to do that. So some of it is like more formal contemplative practices. Like there’s some ignation practices that we, um, have adapted for kids. 

So there’s like an examine prayer, which is like when you reflect on the day and you, you look for God’s goodness or, um, confess when you haven’t seen God. And we have a sort of a modified examine for kids where they hold a cup of tea and they warm their hands and feel the steam, um, to create this sort of embodied experience.

So some of it is more formal and then some of it is just like a little bit more mindful, just creating, um, opportunities for kids to sit with the text or to, um, wonder about it or to, um, be in their body or be out in nature, um, and to just create spaces for, for God to show up for them. 

Jared: Well, Mariko, thank you so much for jumping on and for talking about your, just your experiences and your work in such a passionate way.

I think it’s contagious and it was wonderful to have you. 

Mariko: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was so fun. Yeah. Thanks Mari.

Jared: And now for quiet time. Alright, Jennifer, we just found out this is your first quiet time with us, so welcome to the after party of the podcast. 

Jennifer: I’m so excited. This is very exciting. 

Jared: All right, well let’s talk about the episode a little bit. Our kids, you and me, both our, our kids are a little older, um, than Mariko’s, which means we’ve had a little more time to make more mistakes. 

So the question is, what do you think you’ve done well when it comes to raising your kids regarding faith and, and what are things that you think you could have done better? 

Jennifer: I have some of both of those. So what I did well I think is I resisted the urge to be like the teacher to my kids.

‘Cause you know, I teach the Bible and so I could probably just lecture them about things. Um, and I didn’t, I didn’t ever do that. I wanted to make sure, like, there was more conversation involved and not just me like telling them, um, what to do and what to, what to think. So, um, that I did well.

But I, early on I did some things that I wish I hadn’t done. Like I was still in the evangelical world when I started having kids, and so I did a lot of that like, let’s memorize things or, you know, let me tell the story and there’s like one point to the story and what point do you think, you know, they’re making in this story.

Um, and so I think I, I, I let a lot of my evangelical baggage kind of, uh, influence the way that I talked about the Bible with my kids. So that is, I’m not proud of that necessarily. 

Jared: Did you, did you commit the sin that Mariko talked about where every story is like the hero is the protagonist, and so it’s like be brave like David and be this like whoever the main character was?

Did you tell stories like that to your kids? 

Jennifer: Not exactly. ‘Cause I, you know, I’m a literature person, so I know that not everybody, there’s not always just a good guy. So I did, I did say, what are, you know, like what are some good things that people did in this story? What are some bad things that you, people did in this story?

So at least there was a little bit of, you know-

Jared: Gray. Yeah. A little, a little gray, a little bad. 

Jennifer: Like, “everything’s great in the Bible!”

Jared: Yeah. Right. So for me, it, it was a little bit different in that, when we started, when, when the kids were baby babies, I was still a pastor, but already my faith was transitioning quite a bit.

And so I think my regret was not actually being more intentional about the faith formation of my kids. It was more, like, afraid to really bring anything up because I didn’t want to mess it up.

And so it led to just not a lot of faith conversations in the way that I would’ve wanted to have them. And so my kids didn’t actually grow up with a lot of understanding of the Bible or what’s in the Bible or theology themes because I, I think, was scared to do it wrong, and I didn’t yet have a framework for talking about it.

And so we had lots of open conversations about, you know, Mariko talked about this expansive view of the faith where there’s, people believe a lot of things. So we, you know, I did do that well of having conversations about, well, some people believe this and some people believe that, but it lacked that, like, family faith, like this is, this is who we are, this is how we’re gonna practice this.

We may hold it loosely, we’re, we’re not gonna be dogmatic about it. But that level of conviction around faith things I felt like was lacking. And now I, I feel like there’s something grounding about being in a tradition that I think my kids could have benefited from. 

Jennifer: I can relate to that so much, but not early on.

‘Cause my husband went through or has gone through a faith journey where he came to a place where he wasn’t identifying as a Christian, probably more when my kids were in middle school. 

Jared: Mm. 

Jennifer: Um, and so since then I’ve really struggled with how much do I do spiritually or, you know, as a family of faith.

What? What do I do? ‘Cause I didn’t wanna leave him out of it. Right, right. Yeah. So that’s hard. 

Jared: Yeah. I think it, I think, and there are a lot of people going through that where parents end up in different camps or different places. Maybe same core values, but how that gets shaped and how that gets talked about might be hard to navigate.

How do you, how do you navigate that? So if you and your husband could figure that out, that’d be great. And then just let us know how it, how it works. 

Jennifer: Sure. We’ll write a book about it one day. 

Jared: Yeah, that’d be great. That’d be great. So, um, alright, well maybe then the, the second question is related to the first, which is, if you could go back, what would you, I kind of already showed my hand on that one of what I would do, I think I would do a little bit more of the, the faith formation, not dogmatism, but with conviction and helping to shape it in a way that then could be played with or manipulated or changed later. 

But at least give those narratives and those frameworks and those understandings and ground them in some kind of faith tradition. But what about you? What would you, if you could go back, what would you do differently?

Jennifer: Yes. Similar to what you said, but, um, Mariko was talking about contemplative practices with kids, and then that’s part of, you know, her book, they have contemplative practices throughout the Bible. Um, and I think I would do more of those with my kids. Like I actually struggle with contemplative practices personally.

Like I like to engage the Bible on an academic level, and I like to, you know, go out in the world and do social justice things, but actually being alone and quiet and contemplative, I don’t do that well. And so I did not-

Jared: That’s not your, that’s not, alone and quiet Jennifer? Oh my goodness. No. 

Jennifer: No. So I didn’t do that with my kids, and I think that, um, I think that they would’ve benefited from that.

Um, you know, in my classes we do, um, Lectio Divina sometimes, so reading the scripture passage and just kind of hearing or listening, I would’ve done that, I think, with my kids to get them to like look at the Bible in a, in a more spiritual way. I guess. 

Jared: I wanted to ask one more thing about the episode because it.

I haven’t, I’m really gonna kind of process out loud with you because I don’t know what I think about it. But Mariko talked about, you know, an important part of their reframing with their kids was to talk about the thing behind the thing. So there may be a rule in the Bible that is confusing or weird, we don’t know what to do with it, but asking what’s behind that.

And there’s a long history in biblical interpretation of this broader approach, right? And I might call it the, the kernel and husk approach, where it is in, especially in, in 19th century, uh, 19th century, like liberal, uh, biblical scholarship. There were all these approaches of, yeah, there’s the, there’s the, the husk of culture that’s weird and irrelevant, and, but now we’re enlightened and we know about science and stuff, so we gotta peel that back.

And underneath there’s this really important kernel that we can take away from it. And I think I have a mixed, I have mixed feelings about that approach. So I’m just curious for you and, and from the world of biblical studies, as we think about approaching things with kids, how useful is that approach, do you think, to say, yeah, there’s all this weird stuff, but if we peel back the curtain or pull back, you know, the layers of the, the weird parts, there’s this like, I, I don’t wanna put words in Mariko’s mouth at all.

But sometimes it’s like this universal, there’s these, these timeless truths that we can find and, and she couched it in love and loving others and loving God. So I think that’s helpful. So I’m kind of using that as a springboard, and I’m not really addressing Mariko, I’m more talking about this broader approach with kids of the kernel and husk approach.

Jennifer: Yeah, I think there’s danger in saying like every Bible story has a principle behind it or something like that, because I think some of them do, um, and some of them don’t. Like, again, going back to the evangelical education that I had, like lots of the biblical interpretation stuff that we learned was like, what’s the principle behind this?

Right? And like I’ve come to the point where I’m like, no, no, no, we can’t. We can’t do that because it’s not that. And then also you’re maybe ignoring a lot of the culture that is important. Like if you’re taking a holistic view of scripture, then you do need to engage with the culture and all of that.

But I mean, the idea that, um, there is something behind the thing, especially if it serves as a lens or something, which I think is what Mariko was saying. Um, I, I’m about that. Especially if Jesus is the lens. It was funny when, I think it was, I think my oldest was probably in ninth grade and I was trying to get him to go to youth group and he was like, mom, I get the gist of the Bible.

And it like, I was like, oh no, that’s not good. But as I look back on it, I’m like, well, he, he kind, that’s kind of good. Like the gist is what, you know, what Jesus says and you know, all the law and the prophets. Hang on these, these two things, love god and love neighbor. And that’s what he was talking about.

Mm-hmm. And so now I’m like, okay, it’s actually kind of good that he-

Jared: Yeah. Maybe just the, just stick with the gist. I think the gist is probably good enough. Yeah. 

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So positives and negatives, I think, to this kernel husk thing. 

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that’s helpful. ’cause that puts language to, that’s how I would’ve thought about it or framed it, is my hesitancy has been a tradition where there’s always a, there’s always a, a kernel of some value or some, uh, principle or lesson, and it always happens to line up with my own ideology and that it just happens to be that the timeless truths, when you strip off the culture of the scriptures, it’s revealed that, voila, I was holding the timeless truths all along. 

And so there’s a, I think, a danger in that. And like you said, there’s a danger to, for me, there’s also a danger in disrespecting the text.

It’s like, well, we didn’t get a cultureless text. And it feels that’s not how the Bible presents itself. Hey, I invite you on the journey to get rid of what’s culturally relevant and only have the timeless, and so it feels artificial to me, which feels disrespectful to the, the scriptures that we actually have.

So, now it does make it, I think, much harder to figure out, okay, then how is it relevant? But I’d rather go down that journey than doing violence to the text. 

Jennifer: ‘Cause it is a journey and that helps you understand that we’re always on this interpretive journey with the Bible. 

Jared: Yeah. It’s more telling the story of that culture and our culture and seeing what resonates and what doesn’t resonate, and then finding the wisdom and discernment within that relationship rather than this hierarchy where that’s bad and old and irrelevant, and mine is good and timeless.

It’s more, I have my own culture and that has its own culture. Maybe that’s a fruitful conversation even to have with kids is bringing that awareness of what are the lenses that we’re bringing to this text? Well, I, of course we review it this way because, and here are the influences or why we might approach it this way, but other cultures and in the ancient context and um, well that might be helpful.

And then we need the Jennifer teacher to come and lecture us as children about all this context. 

Jennifer: Yeah. Sounds like fun. 

Jared: Good. Alright, well thanks everybody and we’ll see you next time. Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give. 

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Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of Faith for Normal People. Don’t forget, you can catch our other show, The Bible for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by The Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Joel Limbauan, Melissa Yandow, Lauren O’Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.