These are our stories. . . .

I should hope that my readers are aware by now that I am a hopeless geek.  So it should come as no surprise that I should begin this blog entry with a Star Trek reference, especially in light of the newest Trek movie coming out.

In one of my favorite “Next Generation” episodes, Worf, the Klingon officer, discovers a prisoner-of-war planet where dozens of young Klingons have been held since they were small children.  None of these young people had any memory of their home and they knew nothing of their own people.  Worf, of course, must rescue them physically; but even more importantly, he must rescue them emotionally.  These lost young people, with no sense of belonging or of who they are as a culture, ask Worf to teach them what it means to be Klingon.  I suppose they expect him to begin by describing what their home planet looks like;  or their history; or their political system; or their religious customs or rituals. Worf could easily have started with any of these areas:  anyone familiar with the  Trek universe knows that the Klingon people have a rich and complex history and culture.  But Worf began teaching his new students about what it means to be Klingon by telling them the ancient myth of Kahless the Great and his evil brother.

An impertinent boy dares to interrupt Worf’s narrative. He doesn’t want bedtime stories–he wants facts.  Worf is indignant. “These are our stories,” he rumbles in his impressive bass voice; “they tell us who we are.”

Indeed.  That sentence has stuck with me for years, and I use it constantly in my literature classes.  Our stories both shape us and explain us.  Any story that has survived for decades or for centuries has stayed with us for a reason.  Good or bad, our stories, our myths, our legends, our novels, and our poetry tell us something about ourselves that we want to pass down to our progeny.

All ancient cultures told stories, but the ones which first shaped and spoke to Western Civilization are the Greek myths.  The Romans, whose own mythology was violent and fairly stark, were delighted to conquer Greece and assimilate the beautiful stories of their enemies.  That’s what we have inherited–beauty and violence; soaring ideals wed to pragmatism.  The gods of the Greeks and Romans were gods of nature, and therefore capricious, unpredictable, and self-absorbed.  It’s hard sometimes to tell the gods from the monsters; in fact, most of the monsters were children of gods and therefore under their protection. The heroes in these stories were men who could overcome, or at least survive, the intervention of the gods.  You can easily see the influence of such stories in our culture even today–our admiration of the solitary hero overcoming the odds to survive or of the impudent mortal flouting fate.  Our worship of individualism grew from these roots.  I’m not saying that individualism is a bad thing; but it can lead to bad things, including a resentment of authority and an unhealthy desire for independence from both God and each other.

What would Western culture be like if it were the myths of other people-groups that had been set down and studied, passed down as the wisdom of the ages?  The Norsemen, for example, for all their love of a good fight and their dubious regard for personal property, had gods who felt responsible for the good of mankind.  With the exception of Loki, they worked together for the common good and never exploited the weak.  They fought constantly, but with giants and monsters which threatened both themselves and mankind.  In the end, they are all doomed to die; but their moral compass points more truly north than the Greeks’.

But we are what we are; history has so arranged that we as Westerners be essentially Greco/Roman in our cultural outlook.  You can see it in our laws, in our belief systems, in our behavioral patterns, and in all of our stories.  It is impossible to read a book in the English language, for example, without finding numerous references to Greek and Roman mythology.  Our language is rife with it.  You need not have read any Homer whatsoever to know what I mean when I say I have an “Achilles’ heel” or that I am stuck “between a rock and a hard place.”  You may not know who Achilles is, or that the “rock”and the “hard place” are the monsters Scylla and Charybdis; but you certainly know how it feels to experience these things for yourself.

Down through the years, more and more stories have been added to those original myths; a people talking to themselves about themselves in order to explain themselves to themselves–if you follow me!  There are hundreds of individual stories, rich in meaning, that have entered our cultural consciousness and cut themselves a groove there.  Now our thoughts automatically run along those grooves–for better or worse.  The wisdom of Aesop; the chivalry of Malory and Tennyson; the eloquence of Shakespeare and Milton; the social conscience of Dickens and Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the elegance of Austen and the Brontes; the humor of Wilde and Wodehouse–you need not have actually read these works to have benefited from them or to recognize quotations from them.  For example, many of the social reforms that we enjoy in our modern civilization, policies that separate us as “first world” rather than “third world”, can trace their beginnings to stories that helped steer the minds of the people into those directions.  Our attitudes towards slavery, our work ethics, our treatment of laborers, children, and women, were all shaped by the stories men and women told and that the readers responded to and passed down to their children and to their children’s children in order to better their society.

This is why the study of literature is so important.  To know and understand our stories is to know and understand ourselves.  To learn the stories of our past is to benefit from the wisdom of the ages; or to realize where our erroneous beliefs have come from and why.  We can pick through our cultural mainstays and keep the good and discard the bad, if we realize that they ARE cultural, not Gospel.

In the end, since the only story that was truly inspired is Scripture, we must always compare our cultural stories to the Bible.  And then, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy. . . .” as Paul says in Philippians 4–read it!

Literature as it Translates to Film

As I prepare for my literature classes for next year, searching out just the right novels, plays, and poems to present to each class, I find myself feeling more and more strongly that I should not limit myself to teaching the written word.  For the last one hundred years or so, the visual media have become more and more prominent in our society.  There are a great many people in America today who will never crack open a book, but will watch hours of television every day and see several movies each month.  While occasionally an original story is well-told on film, for the most part movies are remakes of popular or classical works of literature.  Many people in today’s society are exposed to the great stories of our culture exclusively through film rather than the written work. But sometimes,  the film intrigues its fans into actually reading the original work.

I will not say whether I feel this is a good or a bad thing.  It simply is.  Rather than wish the world were otherwise, it is time to face reality and deal with the visual media as an entity that is not only not going away but is taking over as our main source of cultural storytelling. As such, it demands scrutiny:  how well do movies and television translate the written word?

I believe that discerning the difference between a well-made film and a poorly-made one is a skill that must be taught.  It is, in fact, lamentable that it has not been made a priority in schools before now.  Americans are unfortunately content with the substandard fare offered to them and will even enthuse about the most banal and contemptible drivel, not knowing that there are truly sublime films available for them to enjoy if they would only look.  Many Americans, jaded by the constant bombardment of adreneline-producing violence and overly-excited sex, strobing through scene after scene at breakneck speed, can’t appreciate a truly well-made movie when they see one.  They simply don’t know how to process film intellectually, expecting a purely emotional experience.  Often, their attention-spans have been so severely compromised, people simply cannot sit through an entire film without explosions or other emotionally exploitive events to keep their minds from wandering.  I feel that this shows a serious lack in our educational system.

I believe that a natural start to teaching children how to appreciate visual media is to have them read books that have been made into film and help them compare the two media.  Showing them the same elements of story through both methods of storytelling can help them learn to be discerning in their viewing habits.  And fortunately, there have actually been some quite well-done films of many literary classics.

A part of this learning process, however, must include a basic understanding of how these two media necessarily differ.  I am not one of those “purists” who feel a film must be an exact copy of the book from which it is taken.  I am not even one of those people who insist that the book is always better than the movie.  Most of the time, the book IS better than the movie:  but in the interest of truth, it must be admitted that there are exceptions to this rule.  ”The Princess Bride” is the one that springs immediately to mind.  While I enjoyed the book, with its facetious but interminably long introduction explaining “the  good parts” version, the movie incorporates the same sort of facetiousness without the initial tedium.

But, I digress!  The fact is, books can do things that film cannot; and film can do things that books cannot.  Taking advantage of the strengths of each medium is the job of the author and the filmmaker.  Understanding that some of the coolest parts of a book simply cannot translate well to the screen is part of the process of learning to appreciate film for its own strengths.  To give the most obvious example:  a film cannot get inside a character’s mind as intimately as a book can.  Other means must be found to allow the viewer access to the thought processes of the characters.  Another translation challenge is a lack of information.  At times in a written work, the author can state a complicated process quite simply and leave the details to the imagination.  ”He quickly explained to his friends all that had happened to him in the previous few days.”  ”A short scuffle ensued, ending with Mr. Smith head-down in the well.”  The film maker must make a decision as to how to convey these simple sentences visually.  Obviously the conversation must be shown to take place–but what do the characters say?  Or should the conversation simply be alluded to in a later scene so that the viewer knows that all the characters are now up to speed on the happenings of the story?  How should this “short scuffle” be choreographed?  How do we send Mr. Smith head-down into a well without killing the actor portraying him?  What can be a throw-off sentence to the author can become a major head-ache to a filmmaker.

Another problem is length.  A novel can be as long as the author wishes it to be.  A film usually cannot be longer than two or three hours at most.  A novel does not cost the author more the longer it gets.  A film’s costs multiply with each day it takes to shoot.  Therefore, it becomes necessary sometimes to condense a novel into a more manageable size.  Some scenes must be combined; some must be cut out altogether or perhaps only alluded to.  Some characters may even be combined to make the cast a more manageable size.

Here is a more complex example of changes in translation:  The Ghost of Christmas Past in “A Christmas Carol” is a highly symbolic creation, depicted masterfully by Charles Dickens as being perceived as “receding into the distance” and as made up of parts of all the people Ebenezer Scrooge had ever known.  As many times as this book has been made into a movie, no one has ever attempted to depict this character as it is described in the book.  Until recently, it would have been simply impossible to do; but even now, with CGI making so many wonderful things possible, I think it would be a mistake to translate this Ghost literally onto the screen.  Its appearance would simply be too distracting for meaningful dialogue to take place.  In the book, the reader is allowed to forget during conversation that the Ghost is strobing in and out of many different bodies.  On film, the viewer would be overwhelmed by the constant changes.

On the other hand, sometimes filmmakers make decisions in translation that are not defendable and are even deplorable.  Giving a character more lines because one is paying the actor an exorbitant  salary is using poor reasoning skills.  Changing the very meaning of the work by altering the ending (as in, for example, “Beowulf”–don’t get me started!)  is just plain evil.  Being able to tell the difference between good and bad choices would be an important part of the educative process.  Simply accepting any changes a filmmaker makes without questions would be as bad as automatically condemning the changes out-of-hand.  Teaching a student to think about the film and how it was made and giving the student tools to help him discern good filmmaking from poor filmmaking would be the goal.

Next year, I plan to incorporate some films into my literature curriculum and hold class discussions in hopes of helping my students gain viewing skills that will help them navigate through our cultural morass of visual media.  Wish me luck!

Literacy as it Pertains to Popular Media

Since the beginning, education has consistently included certain elements which are considered imperative for the student to master in order to be functional in a civilized society:  the maths, science, history, literature, writing and rhetoric are the mainstays of a well-rounded education.  This has changed little over the centuries, although the teaching of rhetoric in public schools seems to have been curtailed considerably.  But I am coming to feel that literature, as an educational discipline, desperately needs to be expanded and modernized in order to equip the up-coming generation in discernment and understanding of the world around them.

The entire reason for the educative process is to transmit the knowledge and wisdom of all the previous generations of a society to the newest generation.  For thousands of years, this was done orally and then both orally and through the written word.  Why do we make our children study literature in school? Because novels are cool?  Well, yes, novels are totally cool.  But the stories from our past tell us where we came from, who we are as a people, and what our ancestors learned about themselves and the world that is worth knowing.  Rather than let each generation start from scratch and re-invent the wheel over and over again, why not just tell our children what we know so that they can build on our head start?  This is true in the sciences, in the maths, in our history (so that they aren’t doomed to repeat it!), and in our literature.  Our stories reveal the deepest truths about ourselves as humans in ways that science and history never can.  We are wired to learn through stories.  Our myths and legends, parables and analogies, mysteries and science fictions reach us on an emotional and spiritual level that, ironically, cannot be expressed in mere words.

For over one hundred years now, our story-telling has taken on a new dimension as movies and television have progressed and become more easily accessible and thus more and more popular.  I’m not writing this to express whether I believe this is a good thing or a bad thing–it simply is.  And since the visual media is not likely to go away, we should be dealing with it as a branch of “literature” and teaching our children how to appreciate it as an art form, just as we teach plays, short stories, novels, and poetry.  There are some quite amazingly well-made movie and television programs available, but unfortunately they are not generally the most popular.

I am not including documentaries in this discussion.  These programs are valuable and some of them are remarkably well-made.  As tools for teaching science and history, they are becoming increasingly important.  But they are not literature, any more than text books are literature. I am limiting my discussion to story-making.

When I teach literature, I naturally point out the elements of story, the character development, the symbology and meaning behind the story, and the importance of what it shows us about ourselves and the world around us. These elements are present in movies and television, as well;  or, at least, they should be.  It’s exciting to find a movie that not only weaves a ripping yarn but also teaches us something meaningful and shows us universal truths. It’s also exciting to find a television series that carries the story along from week to week and allows the characters to grow and change in a way that shows us something about the human condition.  If these stories are well told,  they can be as valuable to us as books and plays and poetry.

But there is more to great literature than story and character.  Literature is made up of words, and part of the joy of teaching about literature is pointing out the special use of the words to convey emotion and spiritual meaning.  The look of the words; they way they sound together; the flow of the narrative; the choice of active or passive voice; all these elements are as important to the story as the story itself.  Such tools as alliteration, anthropomorphism, metaphor, rhythm–these are important to prose as well as to poetry as the words paint pictures in the mind and spirit.  A good author can make you feel whatever he wants you to feel by choosing his words well.

With visual media, the methods are necessarily different, but the idea is the same.  By the careful use of lighting, sound effects, background music, camera angles, colors, and set dressing, the director can manipulate the emotions of the viewer however he pleases.  These things are subtle, but powerful, and can enhance the story or ruin it.  And, of course, there is the importance of the performance.  Even if all of the other elements are present and perfect, poor acting will destroy the entire work.  On the other hand, superb acting can lift an otherwise mediocre work into something enjoyable and meaningful.

These elements must be taught, though, in order to be appreciated.  Without this appreciation, people are all too often satisfied with banality and cliché.  If people will pay their hard-earned money to watch drivel, studios will continue to offer us drivel.  In the past, great literature has shaped the minds of the people and affected change for good in society.  Visual media has this potential as well, when it is used to good purpose rather than to merely titillate and amuse.  The BBC has been doing this well for years–I can only hope that America will catch up one day.

American Attitudes

One day last year, I gave all of my tutorial students a grade of 100% for having marvelous attitudes. I had never graded for attitude before, but in this case I was pleased to do so. Here’s how it came about: I began the class by telling my students that I was giving them a pop-essay quiz to help prepare them for the essay section of the ACT. I explained why I felt this time of practice was important and proceeded to inform them as to the subject and form the essays were to take and how much time they had to complete them. I had fully expected frowns, sighs, even a groan or two. Instead, they were every one of them smiling at me with anticipation. “This is exciting!” one girl exclaimed. “Yeah, this’ll be fun!” another one agreed.

No, I promise, this really happened. I was not dreaming and I am not making this up.

Since that time, I’ve had the privilege of taking on several more tutorial classes, and I’ve run into the same positive attitudes time and time again. Last week I asked my Middle School Language Arts Class if they would like to diagram sentences on the board and had to jump back to avoid the stampede towards the front of the classroom. When I give them their reading assignments, they cry, “yay!” and can’t wait to get started. I can hardly get through all the material I prepare for my Literature classes because the kids don’t want to stop discussing their latest reading assignments. One of my College Prep Writing students greets me almost every week with an enthusiastic: “I love this class!”

When I was in school, it was considered the height of “uncool” to be enthusiastic about anything, least of all schoolwork. From what my kids tell me, this attitude has not changed much over the years. Learning is a chore, a drudgery, something to avoid if at all possible. Kids complain about their assignments, get them done late, try to get away with doing as little work as they can.

So have I somehow found the only kids in America who enjoy learning? I must be the luckiest teacher in the country! Actually, all of my students are talented, intelligent, and special. But any student can be a good student if he or she wants to be. It’s all in the attitude.

I don’t know where this American disdain for education started. Perhaps it’s the fault of the media, portraying kids as perpetually lazy, whiny, and ill-mannered and labelling this behavior as “cool”. Are the movie and television industries simply reflecting American reality, or are the kids of America watching the media and buying into the message?

Perhaps it started with the kids themselves, bullying those who excel in the classroom to cover for their own inadequacies. I do know that I was persecuted by my peers in school because I enjoyed my classes, made good grades and always completed my assignments on time. I was not a particularly brilliant student, but I did well because I worked hard; as a consequence, I was disliked by almost everyone. It is my understanding that this situation has not changed at all over the years in both public and private schools; if anything, it may have become much worse.

Could it be the fault of the educators? I’m not sure. I know that I had some terrific teachers in high school who were caring, innovative, and encouraging. They made learning exciting for me, but most of my fellow students would have disagreed with me. No matter what the teacher did to try to engage the class, only a few of us responded positively.

My opinion is that it’s the parents that make the difference. The parents of my own students are excited about learning. They not only teach their own children, they continue educating themselves. They discuss what they’ve been learning with their children and with other adults in the hearing of their children, modelling the kind of attitudes that I appreciate so much in the classroom. We should never stop the education process. Americans in particular have no excuse for not taking the time to learn something new everyday. We have access to the knowledge of the world from throughout all ages of history; but do take advantage of that? Or do we waste our time and resources on pointless games and videos of cats? Do we read the great literary offerings of the masters, or do we content ourselves with equivalent of literary junk-food? Do we go to museums and concerts with enthusiasm? What are we teaching our kids when we don’t take the time to improve our minds? Yes, it can be hard after a long days’ work to sit down and read a good book or watch an informative documentary. But our kids have had a long, hard day, too–and we still expect them to finish their homework, while we relax and watch mindless trivia.

Our attitudes as parents are contagious. If we value education for ourselves, our children will value it as well. If we get excited about learning new things, they will view learning as exciting. And enthusiastic students sure make my job a lot more exciting!

Run From Dick and Jane

Look, look. Look and see! See my blog. See my blog rant. Rant, blog, rant!

There was a lot of controversy in the 1960′s and 1970′s about the efficacy of the “Dick and Jane” readers. Johnny, who was “taught” to read with these textbooks, couldn’t. In the 70′s, more and more students were graduating from high school without the rudiments of literacy. Reading was no longer a pleasant pastime for most Americans by the end of the 70′s. Today, it’s rare to find an avid reader amongst the general public. Ask any adult on the street the title of the last book he read, and I’ll wager it was a book he was forced to read in high school and he can’t remember a thing about it. Was it the “whole word”, “look and say” method that failed them? Was it the lack of phonics?

I have not done an official study on this subject; I haven’t done a lot of interviews or administered a battery of tests. But I have done a lot of research on ways to teach children to read, and I have drawn my own conclusions. Why did “Dick and Jane” fail to teach American children to read? “Dick and Jane” is boring.

The first sentence of this blog entry is mildly amusing for the short line that it takes up. Imagine forcing yourself to read page after page of such drivel! The repetition, the constant tone of command, the entire lack of imaginative or interesting content is mind-numbing. I remember as a six-year-old being forced to wade through this stuff in school with only the knowledge of an exciting “Bobbsey Twins” mystery waiting for me at home to keep me going. How did anyone expect children to learn to enjoy reading when they were forced to endure such boring (I used this word in its broadest possible sense) “stories”?

Yes, the pictures are cute. I admit to a nostalgic draw towards the colorful pictures of white, middle-class American suburbia. They’re pretty. But pictures are not words. Words are the most important part of any book. (Do I really need to point that out?) Not, admittedly, the most marketable part, but the most important. I have in my home a number of readers from pre-Great War times, and these contain few or no color pictures, but are filled with interesting, educational, and imaginative narrative. Were our Victorian-era forefathers better readers than modern Americans? You bet they were! What made the difference? Were they smarter than we are? Did they have access to better schools? Did they have more well-funded government programs? No, the real difference is simpler than that. They WANTED to read!

I was a lucky kid. I had access to a houseful of good books to choose from, and parents who took me to the library every week. Books were considered the best presents to give and receive for Christmas and birthdays. My parents read to me when I was too young to read, and they spent their spare time reading in front of me, showing by example that reading is fun for everyone. But what about kids who aren’t so lucky? What about kids who grow up in homes with few or no books, and whose parents do not have time for frivolous trips to the library and do not have the money to purchase books as gifts? What about kids whose parents don’t read and whose only exposure to books is in school? Shouldn’t we offer them books that are at least as exciting as the TV programs they watch every day? What draw is there to reading when books are presented as bland and boring?

There’s a resurgence of nostalgic interest in the old “Dick and Jane” books lately. I’ve seen copies in book stores, and they are just as pretty as I remembered them. And the earnest message they send to me is: “Run, kids, run! Go fast! Run to Dr. Seuss! Read, kids, read!”

The Appointed Times: Teaching Children about the Feasts of the Lord

In honor of the High Holy Days, here is a lesson about the fall “feasts” of the Lord. We call them “feasts” in English, but in Hebrew they are called “Appointed Times”; times to spend with God. These special days are filled with symbolism and significance, and are especially fun to celebrate with children. My own children grew up loving this time of year, and celebrating these holy days of God was a big part of our lives.

God is really big on having celebrations and parties. He wants us to remember all the things He has done for us, and He knows the best way for us to remember is to have a special feast for it. God calls these special days “Sabbaths”. Sabbath means “Rest”, because these days are times when the people were not to work. God wanted them to take the day off in order to spend the day with Him. God really wants to spend time with us, but He knows we get really busy and won’t make the time to spend with Him if He doesn’t tell us to!

Once a week God told His people to celebrate the Sabbath day and keep it holy. What day was that? It was Saturday. Now, for the Jewish people, even today, a day doesn’t start when you wake up in the morning, or even at midnight in the middle of the night. Their days start at sundown of one day and end at sundown the next. So the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday evening and lasts until Saturday evening. This is a day for spending with family, reading scripture, eating a special meal, praying special prayers, and resting and being still with God. Isn’t that a wonderful idea? Christians have gotten away from this idea of keeping one special day just for family and God and for resting. We go to church on Sunday, but otherwise it’s usually just a normal, busy day, isn’t it? I think that’s really sad. God never told us we could stop having a special day once a week to spend with Him, and I think He still expects us to. It is one of the ten commandments, after all.

There were also many special celebrations or feasts throughout the year. There were three in the springtime and three in the autumn. With these feasts, God is the telling a story, the story of how He is dealing with His people. Those first three feasts of springtime have already been fulfilled. They were fulfilled on the very days they are celebrated. We can discuss them another day. The three fall feasts have not been fulfilled yet. They tell of things that will happen in the future. And since we are in the middle of celebrating these appointed times, we’ll talk about them today.

The first of the fall feasts is called “Rosh Hashanah”, which means “head of the year”. It is also called the feast of trumpets, since the shofar, or ram’s horn, is to be blown many, many times on that day. This feast takes place on the first day of the seventh month of the year. In fact, all three of the fall feasts take place during the seventh month of the year. Because this is the seventh month and has so many important days in it, this month considered the beginning of the Jewish year. This is confusing, but think about it. We in America also have two beginnings to our year! The calendar year begins with January, but the school year begins in August or September! Most businesses begin their year with July! So the Jews also have two beginnings to their year: the month of Nisan in the spring begins their spiritual year, and the seventh month, Tishri, begins their secular year.

Another reason for considering the seventh month to be the beginning of the year is that, traditionally, Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the world. The Jews believe that God created the earth on that day over 6,000 years ago. I would not be surprised if this were true, as the Jews have a reputation for keeping track of important dates! At any rate, the seventh month in the Jewish calendar is their most important month. Just as they spend the sixth day of the week getting ready for the seventh day, the Sabbath day, they Jews spend the sixth month of the year getting ready for the seventh month. Every morning of the sixth month, except for the day before Rosh Hashanah, the shofar, or ram’s horn, is blown to remind the people that the time for repentance is now. On Rosh Hashanah, the last trumpet is sounded, and the priest cries out “You who are asleep, wake up! Search yourselves and repent! Remember your creator!” To Christians, this day is an important reminder that Jesus is coming again. Paul says in I Corinthians 15:52 that the last trumpet shall sound, the dead in Christ shall be raised, and we shall all be changed and taken up to meet our Lord in the air.

The ten days after Rosh Hashanah are solemn days of repentance, getting ready for the next feast, the Day of Judgement, or Yom Kippur. This day is actually a fast day, for no one eats or drinks anything that day, but prays that God accepts the sacrifices that are to atone for the sins of the people for the whole year. For Christians, we know that this holy day will be fulfilled on the day of the Last Judgement, when God will open the Lamb’s Book of Life. All those who have accepted Jesus’ death as atonement for their sins will go on to live with Him for eternity. Those who have not accepted Jesus will not be able to live with God, but must go to hell.

The third fall feast is called “Sukkot”, or the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths. This week-long feast begins five days after Yom Kippur, and it is the origin of our own Thanksgiving day. This feast is a celebration of the final harvest. The Jews build booths, or tabernacles, outside and live in them for a week-long family camp-out. People who live in cities and who don’t have yards might build their booth, or sukkah, on their apartment balcony or on the roof! The booths are to remind the Jews of the 40 years their people lived in the wilderness, before reaching the Promised Land. It reminds them that God takes care of His people and provides all their needs. The booths, or sukkahs, must be flimsy in structure to remind us that our lives here on earth are temporary and that we are on our way to the ultimate Promised Land, our home in heaven with God. We as Christians know that this feast will not be fulfilled until the end of time, when we all get home to live with Jesus forever. Here’s a strange fact about this feast: it is to be a week long, but it is celebrated for 8 days! Have you ever heard of an 8 day week? Seven is the number of completion, and this feast completes the year and points to the completion of all time. Eight is the number of eternity. Seven plus one equals completion and beyond! This is the most fun of all the feasts, with camping out and bonfires and lots of good food and fun. It reminds us of how wonderful eternity living with God will be! It reminds of how much God wants to live with us forever: He wants to be our Emmanuel, “God with us”.

Teaching Children About the Wrath of God

Adults in America today have a hard time with the wrath of God. They don’t want it to exist. They want to ignore it, and they hope that by ignoring it or denying its existence, it will somehow just go away. I’m sorry, Americans. God’s wrath is a part of His character and it won’t go away just because you want it to!

Perhaps the mistake is in defining God’s wrath as an emotional response on His part, as if He were a human who is on His last nerve. The wrath of God is coming, not because He’s going to suddenly snap and overreact to childish behavior, but because He has promised us since Adam’s sin that He would destroy evil and He always keeps His promises. I’ve heard it said by so many that a loving God wouldn’t send anyone to hell. But are they really thinking about what that means? If God allowed sin to continue forever, in what way is that loving? Yes, God is allowing wickedness to exist for a time, because He wants to give everyone a chance to repent. But a holy, loving God must deal with wickedness and destroy it once and for all. Unfortunately, those who stubbornly cling to sin will be destroyed along with the sin. How else can there be a “happily ever after”? It isn’t as if they haven’t been repeatedly warned!

Children have an easier time understanding the wrath of God because they long for their parents or other authority figures to “make everything okay” in this sinful world and they get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Children understand sin. They know they do wrong things, and they know that others do wrong to them. They want the bullies to be punished and the adults who hurt them to be dealt with accordingly. Too many adults today are afraid to tell children about God’s wrath, thinking that it will frighten them. This is, I’m sure, because the adults know deep inside that they deserve God’s wrath and it frightens THEM! Children, on the other hand, are greatly comforted by the knowledge that God is greater than sin and that He will deal with evil. For them, a loving God is One who will destroy their enemies and make the world the place of beauty and wonder that they know it should be.

In this lesson, (Isaiah 33-35) God tells Isaiah what the future will be like for the wicked who refuse to repent and then what the future will be like for those who DO repent and who love God.

Those who sin and won’t repent deserve God’s wrath. What is wrath? It means anger. Did you know that God gets angry at sin? He is so holy that He has to hate sin. Sin hurts everything He created. It destroys the things He loves. Imagine that you created a beautiful work of art and then an ugly monster came and threw dirt on it and stomped on it and ruined it. That would make you mad, wouldn’t it? Sin is the ugliest monster you can imagine. It must be destroyed. What if some people throw their arms around that ugly monster of sin and won’t let go of it, even when God begs them to? The time will come when God will finally get rid of sin once and for all, and the people who stubbornly hold onto sin will be destroyed with it. God warns people and warns people that this time is coming. Everyone has time to repent and let go of the monster of sin. If they won’t stop sinning, they must be punished, mustn’t they? It’s the only way to get rid of all sin. Satan and all of his followers will also be punished, and all the sin in the universe will be destroyed. God says that in that time, “all the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine; like shriveled figs from the fig tree.” That sounds scary, doesn’t it? But we don’t have to be afraid, do we? Why do we not have to be afraid? Because if we belong to Jesus, He has already saved us!

The redeemed will be saved from God’s wrath. Redeemed means “bought back”. We were slaves to Satan and to that monster sin from the day we were born, because Adam and Eve gave this world to Satan in the beginning. But Jesus paid the price to buy us back. What was the price Jesus paid to buy us? His own life! He died on the cross to pay for our sins. If we die for our own sins, it’s too late—we’re dead! Did Jesus have any sins of His own to pay for? No, Jesus never sinned. So when He died, He was able to die for your sins and for my sins. And then He rose from the dead! All we have to do is believe that Jesus died for us and we are redeemed!

Isaiah says that when Jesus returns He will bring the fruit of righteousness, which is peace. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Listen to this: “See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. Each man will be like a shelter from the wind, and a refuge from the storm; like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those of those who hear will listen.” Isn’t that beautiful? If we believe in Jesus, we will rule with Him. The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will jump around like deer! The desert land will have water and be fruitful. We will all live happily ever after with our great God! Doesn’t that make you want to rejoice?