One - Offering Godly Images to Our Children

Remember this commandment? “You shall not make for yourself any carved image” (Exod. 20:4). Whew! At least that’s one commandment we’re not likely to break. But what types of images do we offer to our children in our homes? What mental pictures are imprinted on their minds? Cartoon characters? Movie stars? Sports figures? Jesus?

When my husband and I brought each of our little ones home from the hospital, we had a keen awareness that our baby’s mind was like a blank page. What is pictured there now is a collection of what we have put in front of them.

Guard the Images

As parents, we set images before our children all the time. Mental pictures from television, movies, computers, books and songs materialize in the thoughts of our children every day. God created those little eyes and minds to record and store information, so part of our job as parents is to guard carefully the images and pictures set before our children’s eyes and ears.

When my husband and I were first married, we taped a little three-by-five-inch index card to our television set that said, “I will set no worthless [unclean] thing before my eyes” (Ps. 101:3, nas). As a couple, we wanted God’s Holy Spirit to lead us through His Word to understand what images are worthy and clean to put before our eyes.

One of the blessings of living in our high‑tech society is that we have access to so many godly teaching materials. Instead of paying monthly TV cable bills, my husband and I choose to purchase godly movies, music and books for our children.  Unlike adults, children love repetition. They can sit down and watch the same movie or have the same story read to them again and again.

Hug the Bible

The first book a Christian parent wants to read to their child is the Bible. I like to turn to the page in their picture Bible where Jesus is hugging the little boy and say, “I love Jesus.” I actually kiss the picture of Jesus. It doesn’t take long until baby wants to kiss Jesus, too!

In another Bible storybook, I turn to the picture of Jesus holding little children on His lap and, using hand motions, I sing, “Jesus Loves Me.” This way my child has a visual picture of Jesus, a sense of physical touch or contact with Him and a catchy tune to associate with the picture. Most importantly, she sees that Jesus is very special to Mommy and Daddy.

Sometimes, while holding my baby on my lap, I get out my own Bible. I hug my Bible enthusiastically and kiss it and tell them, “I love the Bible.” After showing my love for my Bible, I let the baby feel the shiny edges of the pages and smell the leather. I love it when they’re cutting teeth and decide to bite it! I can hear them testifying as an adult, “I cut my teeth on the Word of God!”

Last year I took all three of my preschoolers into a Christian high school child development class. I was sharing this concept of hugging the Bible with a room full of teenagers when ten-month-old Judah grabbed the Bible out of my hand and hugged it, perfectly demonstrating her early love for the Word of God.

Of course, your little one’s image of Mom or Dad reading that precious book will remain with them always. As a former preschooler of Christian parents, I can tell you today that thirty‑five years ago my mother used a leather-bound red Bible with a red satin bookmark, which stuck out at the bottom. My dad, an ordained pastor, had several Bibles. He gave me the one he received at his ordination, and it is a treasure to me.

Hiya! Hiya!

Our children watched The Donut Man on Tour video from the time they were old enough to sit up in their little swing seat. It’s an older video, and I wasn’t very impressed with it at first. But my husband immediately saw its value and played it a couple of times each week.

Daddy and babies sat glued to the lively images and music. Before they could walk, our babies waved “hiya‑hiya” branches. (I cut the branches off one of my fake house plants so they’d have a “palm branch” to praise Jesus with.) And as soon as they started walking, they toddled around in circles to the upbeat praise music.

Giant Faith in Action

The story of David and Goliath is Johnathan’s favorite story. I have pictures of Johnathan at two years of age covered with plastic armor, flattened on the floor by David’s imaginary stone and slingshot. About a year later, I recorded home videos of him playing the part of David, swirling the sling around and around toward Daddy who crashed to the ground when Johnathan shouted, “You fight me with a spear and a sword, but I fight you in the name of the Lord of Hosts!” (By the way, he memorized that line by watching the Donut Man.)

One day when Johnathan was two, he applied the David and Goliath story in a very real way. He was outside when our neighbors’ huge dog bounded out of their house and headed straight toward little Johnathan. My husband was there, ready to step in as needed. Johnathan’s eyes widened as he watched that dog running straight for him.

In a flash, Johnathan raised his right arm and began twirling and slinging imaginary stones at that dog over and over again. Suddenly, the dog stopped within five feet of Johnathan, cocked its head sideways and looked at him like, “What are you doing, little kid?” At that moment, the owner called the dog, and it turned and walked away.

Although this incident was funny for my husband to observe, Johnathan’s faith was truly strengthened. He took what little faith he had and used it. It worked!

Children Without Shoes

Sometimes our children need help discerning even the good images they see. I remember one day when Johnathan, about three years old, refused to put his shoes on.

“Mommy, I can’t put my shoes on.”

"Why not?”

“Because Jesus only takes up children without any shoes on,” he explained.

“What do you mean, Jesus only takes up children without shoes on?” I asked. “Jesus loves all the children.”

“Yeah, but only the ones without shoes on get to go up with Him. Remember? It’s in the Bible.”

Finally it clicked. Johnathan was referring to that familiar Bible picture of Jesus taking all the little children on His lap—and all of them had their shoes off!

“Mommy, That’s Evil”

All three of our children collectively have not watched as many as fifteen hours of cartoons in their whole lives.

Once in a while I’ve exposed them to short clips of commercials or cartoons. Three‑year‑old Eden usually walks out of the room, totally disinterested. Five‑year‑old Johnathan is much more intrigued with animation. Still, almost every time he’ll discern something evil and say, “Mommy, that’s evil,” or “Turn it off.”

Because we don’t have cable, they’ve rarely seen the big yellow bird, the blue dog or the big purple dinosaur. Twice I rented videos for them with these characters just so they could communicate intelligently about them with their peers.

We don’t declare all of those programs as sinful. We just haven’t needed their input in raising our children. Please understand that I am not sharing what we do as a family as a basis for what all parents should do. I am suggesting that we carefully and intentionally place healthy, moral, godly “images” before our children and not allow our television set or well-meaning relatives decide what is best for our child to view.

Prayer for Elmo’s Bath

It’s funny how “uncartooned” kids relate to cartoon characters. I was in the book section of Wal-Mart, looking for flash cards and fun workbooks for my children. I had the girls with me. Three-year-old Eden reached out and picked up a Sesame Street board book. She turned to a page where Elmo was taking a bath and began to “read.”

“And Lord, I pray right now that I’ll be able to take a bath. And I pray for...OK, you can take a bath now.”

That may be the first time Elmo’s bath was ever prayed over! Of course, five minutes later Eden let the whole store know that she did not want to be put back in the shopping cart. Isn’t that the way it is with children? One moment you’re warmed by their innocent perspectives, and the next you’re correcting their selfish behavior!

Heroes

When I taught in day care, I daily watched preschoolers who were totally surrounded with cartoons and cartoon paraphernalia. They proudly displayed sneakers, book bags, shirts and underwear decorated with whatever cartoon “heroes” were new at the time. During playtime they acted out the cartoons they’d seen on television. This would often result in “time-outs” in a little chair because most of their heroes destroyed everything around them.

I remember a three-year-old who literally threw chairs at his day-care teacher because he’d seen a cartoon character throw chairs on television. For the safety of everyone, that teacher had to ask the parents not to allow him to watch that particular show anymore.

Enough of that—I really don’t like negative stories, and I don’t think there’s much to learn there apart from a warning, “Don’t do this.” Please allow me to share a few personal stories of the positive impact of placing godly images in front of your children. I’m sure you have a story or two to tell along this line as well.

Scott and I want our children’s heroes to be characters from the Bible. In my journal I have recorded a time when three-year-old Johnathan and his cousin Heather were playing.

“God is talking to us,” Johnathan said excitedly. “Come on, let’s go!”

He zoomed over to the front door and fell on his knees. He bowed down on the ground saying, “We bow down to worship Jesus because we love Him.”

He and Heather ran around the living room shouting, “I’m healed; I’m all better!” Then they went back to the door for a repeat. They pretended to hug Jesus, each one saying, “I love You, Jesus!”

Johnathan spun around in the center of the floor saying, “Jesus is taking us to heaven.” Next he repeated the whole thing, trying to get everyone who was watching involved.

I said, “You’ll have to tell me what you see up in heaven—when you get back.”

He looked at me as if I just fell off a turnip truck. “Jesus is in heaven.”

“Of course,” I answered. What was Mommy thinking?

Images of the Father Help the Fatherless

Displaying images of God is especially important to single-parent families. I know one single mom who really battles a fear that her children will not turn out perfectly because they don’t have a father figure 24/7.

Because their father is rarely in their lives, she tells her three-year-old, “Daddy’s heart is sick. Let’s pray for Daddy.”

Her three-year-old prays, “Jesus, heal Daddy’s heart and bring him back to me.”

This mother says that watching her daughter’s heartbreak hurts more than one thousand rejections toward herself. Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly common for dads to abandon both their children’s lives and their responsibility toward their children. The world calls these fathers “deadbeat dads.” I prefer to call them prodigals that Jesus is reaching for.

For this family, the painting by Ron DiCianni, which shows Jesus embracing the prodigal son, may be a wonderful image for the three-year-old daughter. The painting is a visual hope that Jesus can heal Daddy’s heart and that He is listening to her prayers.

Acting Out Images in Play

If children are presented with images of God, they will act out those images in their imaginary play. Sometimes I see Johnathan and Eden in the backyard playing “Jesus.” Eden nails Johnathan to the shed (the cross). She’ll announce, “I’m a mean soldier.”

Johnathan likes the next part. He gets the round turtle shell lid from the sandbox and props it up beside the sliding board. Then he “rolls the stone away,” and the two of them run around the yard shouting, “Jesus is alive, hallelujah! He’s alive!”

I giggle to myself sometimes, wondering how many neighbors they’ve witnessed to in their play times. (The euphoria ends when I hear them arguing just as loudly over a particular swing or yard toy.)

I’m not trying to label all television as sinful. Television programming just doesn’t produce the quality or the quantity of fruit that biblical training produces. And it’s important that we don’t just keep the bad stuff away from them. As Christian parents, we need to make a genuine effort to offer our children godly images in books, videos, Christian crafts and music. It’s our job to fill their impressionable imaginations with images of God.

Whenever I get “stuck” in figuring out how to parent my child, I look for Bible stories that may minister to me or to my child.

Bible Stories Impact Preschoolers

Why is it that two- and three-year-olds delight in stashing things in secret places? Everything from dirty diapers to unwanted vegetables rot in some dark hole until fumes from their decomposition send us scrambling to uncover last month’s hidden sin.\

With our two-year-old Judah, it has always been vitamins. She doesn’t like the taste of them, so she stashes them in her secret hiding spots all over the house. One night her daddy gave her a vitamin and told her to take it. He sweetly and convincingly persuaded her to take it into her tiny hand. She’s quite the daddy’s girl, and she smiled reassuringly while he walked away into the kitchen. She watched him leave, and then, unaware that I was watching her, as quickly as her little legs would go, she scooted into her bedroom. After looking around to be sure no one was watching, she did a hook shot with that vitamin, ricocheting it off the wall as she threw it behind the dresser. Pleased that it made the mark, she turned around and walked back out to the living room. I turned my head and howled, then composed myself and told my husband what happened. He made her dig it out and dust it off, and she ate it anyway.

She had that same expression on her face as she did when we first offered her Gerber vegetables. It was a “don’t feed me anymore of that green stuff” look where she turned her head sideways, buttoned up those lips and, out of the corner of her eye, dared us to try to make her eat it.

Judah’s vitamins fall out of her car seat when I pull the tray up; they’ve been found in her shoes, in the tissue box, between the couch cushions and in the trash can. Not only does she hide vitamins, but she also enjoys hiding herself whenever she’s called. I wondered if we’d ever break the “hiding habit.” Where can a parent turn when a child continues misbehaving?

I kept thinking, She’s not getting as many Bible stories as the older two did. I need to read more of the Word to her.

So I took a shot at reading more Bible stories. I tried the one about Jesus feeding the five thousand (Judah would gladly give Jesus her fish and bread if it meant she didn’t have to eat it), David and Goliath (I wonder if she imagined slinging vitamins instead of stones) and God creating the world.

Judah would impatiently listen to my story choice and always ask for the Jonah story. I was thinking, Jonah? Over and over I would read Jonah from two or three different storybooks she found. After about two weeks of Jonah, Judah looked up at me one day while we were on page five and said, “He hidin’.”

Lights. More lights. A sonic boom.

HIDING! That’s it! I suddenly felt transformed from “Super Bomb” to “Super Mom!” I went for it!

“That’s right. Jonah’s hiding. Does God see Jonah?”

Judah nodded her little head. “Jonah should obey God. He shouldn’t hide when God calls him.”

Well, God ministered this story to Judah by His Holy Spirit. I didn’t understand why she liked this particular story read to her over and over again. I was certainly tiring of Jonah. But God was ministering His life into my little girl, and when she showed me what that story meant to her, my trust in God soared.

And the vitamins? Well, she seems to be doing better, but let’s just say I haven’t cleaned behind her dresser for a while.

Whenever we call her, and Judah chooses to hide, all we have to do is say, “Could Jonah hide from God?” And eventually she crawls out of some dark hole grinning in obedient triumph. I love it! The Word works!

In Closing...

Has the Holy Spirit nudged you or smiled over you while reading this chapter on offering godly images to our children? Is there a prayer that came to your heart as you read? If by some miracle the house is quiet, why not take a moment to write it down?

Journal Time

I will set no worthless [unclean] thing before my eyes.
—Psalm 101:3, NAS

Father God, in Jesus’ name I pray...

What specific “godly images”—specific books, videos, television programs and other tools—have you incorporated into your family’s life to help your children learn about God?

While you were reading this chapter, did the Holy Spirit speak to your heart about making changes in the “images” presented in your house? What were they?