GENDER:
A conversation guide for parents and pastors
By Brian Seagraves and Hunter Leavine
The Good Book Company 75 pages. £3.99
ISBN 978 1 784 983 505
Buy it, read it, teach it, keep referring to it, buy more to give away.
For those who want a more detailed review, this easy to read and remember text addresses the issue of the moment by training up a child to have biblical thinking and to engage helpfully and lovingly with trans-gender people and the ideology in general.
It acknowledges that we tend to ‘shelter children from all of the brokenness of the world’. But this is impossible to achieve, and so ‘life’s most challenging issues’ need to be taught as ‘often the hardest issues to talk about can be turned into the strongest bridges to Christ’. We may feel discomfort as we discuss these issues with children; society doesn’t feel any discomfort. The authors are clear that this isn’t a ‘one-off’ Bible study, but an ongoing conversation that needs to be had.
Great apologetics
With the thought that it’s ‘never too early to start’, the book has Bible teaching and thoughtful questions aimed at three broad age groups of children: infants, juniors and secondary aged pupils. It ends with a great apologetics chapter on answering typical questions that anyone might face. Although this is titled ‘For Adults’, increasingly these are the kind of questions that any person of almost any age will encounter. I’ve already had to discuss some of the questions with my children when the eldest was only nine. The government plan for Relationships Education, advertising hoardings, and a walk to the shops alongside Joe Public shows our pre-schoolers are growing up with a ‘broad view’ of male and female.
It notes that we should ‘honour and promote diversity in expression of masculinity and femininity’. Jacob cooked (Genesis 25) and Jael was handy with a tent peg (Judges 4). The latter example, though humorous, was not the best to cite – there really are better examples of women being bold and strong – but this one sentence doesn’t undermine this excellent book on teaching the Bible’s worldview on gender through good questions and sound argument.
GENDER: a conversation guide … for everyone.
