Most Sunday school children know...
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Most Sunday school children know of David and Goliath. Fewer know of David’s adultery. Almost none, however, could correctly state that David, who wrote wonderful prayers and songs, was also a systematic, genocidal mass murderer (1 Samuel 27). For the sake of our Christian faith, students should learn all this. How can people do terrible things and also be wonderfully artistic, even religiously so? Consider Pablo Picasso. He demonstrated and pioneered the great changes in twentieth-century art. However, as Paul Johnson points out, Picasso was unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood and between right and wrong. Yet Johnson also observes, as the Bible shows, creative genius and evil can exist within the same person. We teach our children best when we emphasize, as Luther did, that Christians are at the same time set right with God and sinners (who do sinful things!). Having been taught that, students might understand better that God only has people like us to work with.
