Symbolic Unfoldment: Why Kids Need Bible Stories

The term symbolic unfoldment refers to how stories and symbols can bring revelation about ourselves, God, and others. For example, Genesis begins with two trees in a garden. One brings life, and the other, death. Later, we find Jesus executed on a tree. That tree, which spells his death, is our path to life. Finally, the Bible ends with a tree whose leaves heal the nations. Other references to trees lie scattered throughout the Bible, offering touchpoints of metaphor. The righteous man planted like a tree by the water in Psalm 1 comes to mind.

So what do all these trees have to do with us?

Trees show us the seasons in our lives. They show us how our lives echo the cycles of death and resurrection. Now in my fifties, I feel the inevitability of winter in a way I didn’t when I was thirty. Symbolic unfoldment is organic, beginning as a seed in our spirits, unpacking its leaves, flowers, and fruit into our lives, leaving gardens of meaning and promise.

Suppose we see the Bible as a giant storybook that tells us how reality works through example. In that case, we begin to interact with our own story in a way that produces understanding and growth. For instance, I have always resonated with the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Suppose we see this retelling as a mere history. In that case, we can only be outside observers with no participation in her world-changing visitation from the angel.

But symbolic unfoldment means this meeting can happen to us as well. I become Mary. Not the mother of the Messiah, of course, but pregnant with the presence of God. Am I willing to allow the Holy Spirit to plant his seed in my spirit? Isn’t that what the conversion experience is? We say to God the words of Mary: Be it unto me as you have said.

We must wrestle with the story of Mary because her story is also ours.

Mary’s submission opened her to a world of pain and also of incredible grace and privilege. It cost her her reputation, and in the end, her son, if only for three days. Am I willing to lose my reputation? Am I ready to break my heart over others? Can I bear the Holy Spirit in me to the point where the life of Christ is birthed in my life? This line of questions is the work of symbolic unfoldment.

Let’s take another Christian symbol; Communion. The body and blood of Jesus, if interpreted only on one level, becomes a ritual that most churches do these days sporadically. But what does it mean to partake in Communion? Does it mean to take in the Presence in body, soul, and spirit? Is it confirming our acceptance of salvation? Sometimes Communion is an act of warfare, making a spectacle of the powers and principalities that torment us. It reminds us that the victory is won. The sacrament reminds us of what is sacred, becoming another way to invite the Holy Spirit into our deepest selves.

If we wrestle with Communion, we begin to understand the nature of sacrifice. My own symbolic unfoldment in terms of Communion means that I lay my life down for others because Jesus laid his down for me. He breaks the bread that is my life and blesses others with it.

I wrestle with angels, if figuratively.

I am the prodigal son, the older brother, and the father waiting for his son to go home, though maybe not all at once. I have eaten the forbidden fruit, walked on water, and stood up to my Goliaths. You have too, probably. The glory of this landscape of symbols is that I have a library of meaning I can refer to. When fresh enemies surface, I know God is still on my side.

But what happens to a generation who does not speak the language of meaning? What symbols exist for them to learn how to hope, move forward in faith, or forgive? Gen Z has the least exposure to the Bible in decades, maybe more. Are their only symbols attached to the status that comes from money, beauty, fame, or the current culture of virtue signaling?

We can’t teach Bible stories as a mere impartation of knowledge.

Instead, we introduce the people of the Bible as the men and women they were, humans dependent on God for rescue. We teach our children to be familiar with their lives, knowing that these seeds might blossom one day into revelation. The spirit of a child is a seed as well. We cultivate their lives, but without much control. We nurture the soil around them and give them what they need to grow in body, soul, and spirit. But any gardener will tell you that many things can interfere with the sprouting, growth, and harvest of seed.

It puts me in mind of a parable about sowing seeds. Are we sowing the lives entrusted to us by God on hard soil, on the path where birds can devour them? Since the average child spends less than one day a year exposed to the Bible, I would suggest just that. Unfortunately, even fiction with a Christian worldview for middle grades and older is hard to find. We can’t rely on the Chronicles of Narnia and A Wrinkle in Time to be our only contributions to children’s literary and spiritual growth.

I want to invite anyone reading this to engage in the language of meaning. Find the treasure hidden in a field, be grafted into the branch, and adopted into the family of God. And then talk about it with your kids. Teach them to find their purpose, to frame their life’s journey with truth. And not just truth as a concept, but truth in the person of Jesus Christ who shows himself as a door to life and a new way.