The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
by Sally Lloyd-Jones
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sally Lloyd-JonesIllustrator: Jago
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-01
ISBN: 0310708257
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: ZonderKidz
Product features:
- Age Appeal: 4 - 8.
Book Reviews of The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
Book Review: Are you sure this is what the Bible says?
Summary: 1 Stars
Sorry to be negative, in the light of 54 five-star reviews, but this book should be treated with caution.
I was very excited about this book at first, especially to see it recommended by Tim Keller, whose preaching I have found so helpful. However, there is much in this book that is seriously wrong.
To summarise, sin, obedience and judgement are minimised. Sin is defined as `believing the lie that God doesn't love you' which is not a biblical definition. It is not the case that men and women have questioned that God really loves them, and so they have decided to go it alone. It is not the case that God is simply trying to reassure us that He does really love us and we should all come back to Him. It is actually the case that men and women say, `Stuff God's love for us! Who cares? We hate God and don't want Him! We want to be God!' This is how revolting and gross sin really is, and that is what makes God's grace so utterly amazing, that He would want to redeem us, rescue us from just punishment which we deserve and He demands.
Here are some detailed remarks, if you have the time!
p12 God is LOVE - 'God wrote, "I love you" - He wrote it in the sky ... to make our hearts sing' [contrast the Bibles' view of what we see written in the sky and the earth]
[this is true/helpful BUT it is also a PART only of the truth. Like with most unbalanced or heretical things, you MUST 'read the gaps']
p14 LAW is minimised and reduced to utilitarianism: "the rules show you how life works best" [contrast - and note the absence of - the Bible's view of God's authority and character + man's obligation towards him]
pp7,10,11,17 by contrast look very good
p30 TEMPTATION is identified and defined as "wondering: Does God love me?"; SIN is identified and defined as a 'terrible lie which whispers, "God doesn't love ME"'
Read this page carefully. They did not disobey - they did not transgress a command - they did not lust or long or display pride. There is not even an ACTIVE verb: simply a PASSIVE entering - NOT even specifically into them - but "into the world", this lie "came". Adam didn't do anything. Eve didn't do anything. They were not responsible. It just came ... and it was 'just' a lie about love [nothing about God's rights and dues from man]. Now if that isn't bad theology and doesn't hit us between the eyes, are we awake??
p33 Exceptionally, there is a contrast here: there IS mention of "broken the one rule". However, the author does not want our mind to SETTLE on this truth, but to quickly take us off onto the subjective again, NOTE: "they HADN'T JUST broken the one rule - they had broken GOD'S HEART". The emphasis on broken relationship is a helpful corrective to a non-relational/mechanistic style of theology, but this emphasis must never replace the emphasis God has PUT THERE in the passage.
You are reading here an aspect of an interpretation of a Bible truth - now of course children and adults will like this as this is the MOST PALETABLE aspect of the truth. The harder aspects emphasised in the Gen.3 text are all sidelined. This is therefore a serious issue.
p34 repeats the PASSIVE entry of sin: "sin had come ... IT would never leave". Now we look again for a definition of SIN on this page. What are we served up?:
"God's children would always be running away from Him" ... "Their hearts would break and their hearts would not work properly" "They are living in such pain" ... and what of the retribution due for this sad crime?!!?: protection!! God concludes: "There's only one way I can protect them" !! Of course kids love it.
You walk away and feel sad - your heart breaks - and God is INCAPABLE of allowing you to feel pain ["God couldn't let his children live in such pain ..."] so he did what any self-respecting God would do and was 'nice' to them, "PROTECT"ing them every step of the way. Now of course all this is lovely and in its place, if we know-what-she-means, it is rather true and rather lovely, BUT it is NOT the [balance/emphasis of the] message of the Bible.
SIN has been identified and confused with both its consequences & its punishment. In the Bible you have SIN and you have RETRIBUTION. In this you find both human and divine AGENCY and RESPONSIBILITY. In our author's eyes, man experiences sin - the cause and the consequences being the same: you are away from God and you and he are heart-sick. Having foolishly wandered away, the corollary is to expect you can wander back once you realise God DOES love you after all. What a lovely message! I expect folk will buy that in droves.
p33 God's response is that he gets a stomach-ache or something. "A terrible pain came into God's heart". "they had broken God's heart". Yes God does have 'nice feelings'. Everything about God is [in the proper sense of the world] 'nice', but it is not this-sort-of 'nice'. He is all goodness, all holiness, all-powerful. SO, e.g. His holiness is all-loving; his wisdom is all-powerful. But our author demurs from allowing that his love is all-holy. His actions are all-righteous. This we are not allowed to know. This is the heresy gap in this issue.
further e.g's at random:
p212f Note the deletion of all the rational and logical reasons for following Jesus highlighted in Mark's gospel. What are we served up?: "they couldn't explain it" ... "but something" ... "when they looked at Jesus" ... "their hearts were filled" ... What is this? This is mysticism. Indefinable niceness in Jesus which just makes you all gooey and you can't help ignoring your fish. Now, as ever, I bet there WAS a wonderful and perfect somewhat-indefinable 'wonderfulness' about just a 'look' from the saviour ... BUT this is not the message of MY bible. It is her message but it is not MINE.
p214 Jairus finds Jesus in the TEMPLE (cf. Mk5, Jn 8) - I didn't think he did ??
p220 "He was making the sad things come untrue". I think this is rather more vague than my bible.
p228 Title "The Singer" - unsure why this title is there, but am concerned that's what she thinks Jesus is doing, namely "singing a love song"
p235 ... here comes the song: "It was the song all of God's creation had sung to him from the very beginning. It was the song people's hearts were made to sing:
GOD MADE US - GOD LOVES US - HE IS VERY PLEASED WITH US [that's news to us evangelicals, surely!!]
It was WHY JESUS HAD COME INTO THE WORLD: TO SING THEM THAT WONDERFUL SONG; to sing it not only with his voice, but with his whole life - so that God's children could REMEMBER it and JOIN IN and sing it too"
This is far-out way-off-the-mark liberalism. This is not the gospel. This is utter LIES. It is so far off being true to the gospel that I cannot call it less. It is a LIE.
The consequences of her view of SIN come out here. You have just FORGOTTEN that GOD LOVES YOU. Result??: ALL you have to do is just REMEMBER again. You've forgotten the love-song of all mother-earth; don't fret: Jesus came to SING it again .... and now you can "join in and sing it, too"
If every page of a book was like this, Evangelicals would have the sense not to touch it, but you also have contrasting pages like page 301: "for this reason I came into the world", with the helpful comment, "It was God's plan".
I think this is [the predictably sad and repeated case of] selling a book to a wide audience: it's a book which looks BOTH liberal and EVANGELICAL. It is clever enough that both groups will buy it and like it.
p292 promises a "Forever Happiness that won't ever leave". I think she means the "peace" promised in John 14. The choice of words is I think unwise.
p294 Note the PASSIVE approach to sin again in the last para.: Jesus was to take "the blame for everything that HAD GONE wrong". Requirement, [dis-]obedience, responsibility, culpability, accountability - all are DEAD for this author. It's ALL about warm or broken hearts and 'songs'
p296 The identifying and confounding SIN with CONSEQUENCES (per Gen.3) appears again here: "WHEN people ran away from God, they LOST God - it WAS WHAT happened WHEN they ran away. Not being close to God WAS LIKE a punishment". [Note the utter absence in her theology of,"man did this SO God did THAT"]
Such is her hatred of the doctrine of punishment that she de-bunks it, saying that what is true and real and important [namely that SIN and its consequences are IDENTICAL (no 'agency' being involved)] is LIKE a punishment, but is not ACTUALLY ["God forbid"!!] a REAL punishment. This again is a major departure from truth and faithfulness to the gospel.
Compare page 169 [Jonah]: "Even though you 'run from' God (cf. p347), he CAN'T STOP loving You (=p331)". God has a one-track personality that can't stop loving ... well, YES, but also, NO. My God is BIGGER than that. Her view is reductionist: God is ONLY, irreducibly, inevitably LOVE, unsullied by other bible-truths.
There IS NO punishment ... and the nearest thing you can imagine to such an unthinkable thing is that you have walked away from perfect love. BEWARE BEWARE. It sounds SO SO appealing.
p317 "Was God really making everything sad come untrue (even death)??" - I don't think this is clear enough to be easily able to be reckoned to be properly 'true'.
[=p220 =p321]
p323 [The great commission]. Just compare what's here with Matt 28:18 and READ THE GAPS ! There is a refusal to use the word "obey" (generally) throughout the whole book (cf. disciples/teaching them to obey ...). [Compare p329 (+ p30 above already) - there is no such thing as disobedience, but rather "the poison and the terrible lie and the SICKNESS in their hearts" (which is solved by "You are my child and I love you" p329).
I fear this is a liberal book with evangelical glosses. I sense that perhaps the author and her editor have very different theologies and this book was a compromise OR it is aimed at SELLING WELL.
There are some ASPECTS (helpful) of truth in this book. But it will do much harm if children are raised on it.
Summary of The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
The Moonbeam Award Gold Medal Winner in the religion category, The Jesus Storybook Bible tells the Story beneath all the stories in the Bible. At the center of the Story is a baby, the child upon whom everything will depend. Every story whispers his name. From Noah to Moses to the great King David---every story points to him. He is like the missing piece in a puzzle---the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together. From the Old Testament through the New Testament, as the Story unfolds, children will pick up the clues and piece together the puzzle. A Bible like no other, The Jesus Storybook Bible invites children to join in the greatest of all adventures, to discover for themselves that Jesus is at the center of God's great story of salvation---and at the center of their Story too.Christian Books
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