Last weekend I was lucky enough to take part in a stop on the “The Stories God Tells” tour with Jonathan Merritt (award-winning columnist at The Atlanticand now children’s book author) and Matthew Paul Turner (New York TimesBestselling author of several popular children’s books).
Also present for the stop at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas were the church’s senior pastor, Victoria Robb Powers, who recently co-authored a children’s book, and Joanna Carillo, who illustrated both Robb’s and Merritt’s books.
Merritt’s introductory remarks speak to the importance of the stories we tell:
Jonathan Merritt reads from “My Guncle and Me.” (BNG photo by Mara Bim)
The stories we tell are more important than most people realize. Especially when the people we’re telling those stories to are our children. And that’s the problem. You see, the stories we often tell people are not very good stories. They’re stories of disempowered women. Or men who solve their problems with violence. They’re stories of love that looks a lot like interdependence. They’re stories that stir in our hearts anger at others or shame at ourselves or fear of something or someone we’ve been told is a threat. The reason we’re here tonight is because we believe these are not the stories God tells. We believe that a good God tells good stories. That a loving God tells loving stories. That the liberating God tells liberating stories. And these are the stories that the people you’re going to hear from tonight are dying to tell.
Turner, Merritt’s counterpart on the tour, is no doubt familiar to anyone who attends an established Protestant church and has a child under the age of 10. Ten years ago, Turner filled what was then a vacant space in the world of Christian children’s books. Everything else on the market was written for parents living in the Bible-believing evangelical church tradition and was filled with condescending, moralistic stories aimed at producing “good children.” Turner offered something new for those of us who parent outside the church context that demands a literal, legalistic, and toxic interpretation of the Bible.
I first became aware of Turner when his book, co-written with the late Rachel Held Evans, was published in 2021. My daughter had just turned 5, and after reading her book What is God like? I went out and bought every one of his children’s books because they so accurately express what I want to teach my daughter about God, herself, and others: That God is love and that everyone who loves knows God. (1 John 4:7)
That’s why this reading tour and its message is so important for both children and the adults among us. Merritt emphasized this point to the mostly adult audience: “One of the reasons we write children’s books for children is to teach them things that hopefully they will never forget. One of the benefits of adults reading children’s books is that we remember things we’ve forgotten.”
Matthew Paul Turner reads from one of his children’s books. (BNG photo by Mara Bim)
Storytelling is a sacred work. Storytellers have existed in every people group that has ever lived on this small planet we call home. Stories about God and God’s relationship with humanity are especially sacred.
Powers spoke of the responsibility of churches regarding the stories about God that they spread:
The stories we tell about God shape how we view ourselves, others, and the world. … Religious trauma is often a direct result of telling false and harmful stories about God. Stories that cause people to experience stress and shame and sometimes even self-hatred. … The stories we tell about God have a very special power. They have the power to heal or to hurt. Most of the stories we tell about God come from the Bible, but we have choices. We have choices about how we interpret these stories and how we tell them.
Which brings me to the children’s books that this tour is about.
Merritt’s book, My Guncle and I, tells the story of Henry, a little boy who struggles with being different, and the love and compassion he receives from his Guncle (short for a gay uncle). “When I’m really sad, my Guncle squeezes my hands. He lets me cry all my tears and says he understands me,” the book says.
During his visit, Guncle goes to church with Henry and his family, and for anyone who has ever experienced the malice of a self-righteous congregation, this part of the story rings especially true.
The next morning, my Guncle sings loudly in church. He prays and gives thanks, and he does so devoutly. His brightly colored outfit makes two women stare. As we walk past, they both giggle, but he doesn’t care.
After Guncle leaves, Henry remembers his parting words: “You are the most special child I have ever known. So be yourself, even when you grow up.” Henry takes the words to heart and thrives in school, where he learns to love himself and others. Because as we all know, but too often forget, “To love other people like that, you must first love yourself and know that you are OK.”
The situation is similar with Turner’s new book, You will always belongreassures young readers that they are loved and belong – they belong to God, their families, friends and communities, and, most importantly, they belong to themselves.
On your very first day, when you breathed on your own, you belonged to yourself and were created to be known. … For when God created you, He saw only beauty, purpose, and pure truth.
The book ends with the beautiful and hopeful message: “When you celebrate yourself, God celebrates you too and the world becomes brighter and a little newer.”
What might our world look like if the stories we all tell about God were ones of love, joy, peace, goodness and hope?
Joanna Carillo (BNG photo by Mara Bim)
When discussing their work Joanna Carillo referenced a metaphor she uses when illustrating children’s books – a metaphor one of my professors in Old Testament Seminary used when talking about how we should read and interpret Scripture. Carillo explained how she uses the metaphor of “mirrors and windows” in her illustrations: “You can either look through a window and see the life of someone else or someone similar/different from you – worlds that could be possible. Or through a mirror. You see yourself.”
The same applies to biblical texts. If someone sees only a dominating, jealous God in the text, it is worth asking whether one is looking through a window or into a mirror.
Carillo illustrated Merritt’s My Guncle and I and the book that Powers wrote together with Cameron Mason Vickrey, My love, God is everywherewhich has become a favorite of both me and my now 8-year-old daughter.
Through My love, God is everywhere, A little girl asks her mother where she can find God in everyday life, and her mother lovingly confirms that God is always with us. God is found higher than the trees and deeper than the things under the dew. God is there when life is loud and chaotic, just as God is there in the silence and stillness. God is with us when we are doing well and when we are doing badly, when we are happy and when we are sad.
When the little girl finally learns about death, she asks her mother whether God is present in life or in death. Her mother answers:
My love, God is here with you now, filling your lungs with every breath. God is always near you and nothing can separate you – not even death. Because even when you die, God’s arms are stretched out wide, ready to dry your tears and greet you on the other side.
The stories we tell about God matter because the stories we tell about God often act as a mirror, reflecting back to us the stories we tell about ourselves, our families, our communities, and our planet.
When churches tell false stories about the loving God – when churches spread select Bible quotes to portray God as an angry, vengeful, emotionally abusive parent – we all lose. But when we tell stories about a loving God who is always with us and who values and loves each of us for who we are, each of us can become what God called us to be.
These stories of a loving God are the kind of stories that we humans desperately need both in life and just before death.
This point became clear when Taylor talked about two different letters he received in response to his book. When God created you. The first letter was from a pastor who also worked as an end-of-life counselor. She said that while visiting a 99-year-old woman in the last week of her life, she noticed Taylor’s book on the side table. During the last week of her life, the woman asked three times to have the book read to her. The second letter was from a man who had recently become a father. The baby only lived for three hours, and the parents read Taylor’s book to him once an hour.
A loving God deserves stories and storytellers who convey God’s love to all people. And we – all of us – urgently need such stories today.
Mara Bim
Mara Richards Bim is a Clemons Fellow at BNG. She recently completed her Master of Divinity at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology. She is also an award-winning theatre practitioner, Playwright and director and founder of the Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.
Related articles:
Rachel Held Evans started the story, Matthew Paul Turner took it up and the result is hope for children of all ages
Conservative Baptist Network attacks James Merritt for saying something nice about his son
Grace and peace to you – at the point of a sword | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
