The Bible Is for Kids: Overcome Your Concerns Today

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I’m so excited to bring you this post from Danika Cooley, who is an award-winning children’s author and Bible curriculum developer (we love using Bible Road Trip™ in our homeschool!). She is sharing wisdom to encourage moms that the Bible is for kids…and that you CAN help them learn it and love it!

Is the Bible really appropriate for our kids? Isn’t it too long, too hard, or too edgy? The Bible is for kids! Overcome your concerns today.

Do you ever wonder if the Bible is really appropriate for your kids? Is the conventional wisdom that our kids just can’t grasp God’s Word accurate?

What about sections of the Bible that say we should read the Bible to our kids?

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. – Ephesians 6:4, ESV

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9, ESV

As the developer of an at-home Bible curriculum for families, Bible Road Trip™, and the author of a blog that exists to equip parents to teach the Bible to their kids, Thinking Kids, I’ve received a lot of emails about kids and the Bible over the past decade. Objections to teaching the Bible to kids tend to fall into one of three categories.

Parents often worry:

• The Bible is too big to read with their kids.
• The Bible is too hard for children.
• The Bible is too edgy for their family.

These are valid concerns about the Bible and your kids–and there are answers that will help you overcome them!

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The Bible is for Kids

The good news is that teaching the Bible isn’t hard. Your family can learn the Bible together.

Is the Bible too big for kids?

The Bible is not too big to read with your kids.

The New International Version of the Bible contains around 726,000 words. The King James Version has about 60,000 additional words due to the way the translation is phrased.

Contained in the English-language Bible’s roughly 726,000 words, there are 66 individual books. Each book has a number of narratives—smaller stories in the book.

How big is 726,000 words, really?

• An average nonfiction book—such as Help Your Kids Learn and Love the Bible—has about 60,000 words.
• The children’s fiction book Charlotte’s Web has around 30,000 words.

Even the Bible looks like a really big book, it is truly the same size as about 12 modern Christian living nonfiction books—or 24 children’s chapter books.

You may decide to spend three years reading through the Bible with your family from cover-to-cover. That is completely doable!

Is the Bible too hard for kids?

The Bible is not too hard for your children to understand.

Different English translations are rated appropriate for different reading levels.

For instance:

• The International Children’s Bible (ICB) is written at a 3^rd grade reading level.
• The New International Version (NIV) reads at a 7^th grade level.
• The King James Version—which was translated in 1611 and updated in 1769—is a 12^th grade reading level.

We can choose a version that is easier to understand for our kids.

When our children turned 7, we gave them each an adult ESV Bible—that’s rated as an 8^th grade reading level.

Did they understand everything we read together? No. But, our kids didn’t automatically understand math, phonics, or science, either. Everything our children learn is gained through both exposure and overt teaching.

The really good news is that God built us for story—and the Bible is a story.

Our kids may not understand everything about a given story, but through the rhythm of the narrative in God’s Word, they obtain a deepening understanding of who God is, who we are and our need for a Savior, God’s great plan for salvation, and Jesus’s commands to his followers.

Is the Bible too edgy for kids?

Paul tells us:

All Scripture is breathed out be God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV

That is true. The whole Bible is valuable. However, not every part of the Bible is necessarily something you need to explore with your five-year-old as you go through the Bible.

You can skip stories such as Judges 19–the story of the Levite, the concubine, and the tribe of Benjamin. You can also skip long technical sections like the dimensions of the temple. When you read the Bible again, read more of those sections to your kids. By high school, you’ll want to read the whole Bible together.

The good news about kids and the Bible.

The good news? The Bible is not too long, too hard, or too edgy for our kids. The Bible is God’s Word to them. It equips them for salvation—and they need it.

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