The Wonder Podcast with Meredith Anne Miller

Jo Hobbis chats with Meredith Anne Miller about her new book 'Wonder', which serves as a guide for adults to explore the Bible with children. They discuss the unique approach of the book, the selection of stories included, and the importance of making biblical narratives accessible to kids. Meredith shares insights on teaching children about faith, the significance of wonder in conversations, and the complexities of understanding the Old Testament. The discussion also touches on the exclusion of certain stories, like Noah's Ark, and the overall goal of fostering a deeper connection with scripture for both kids and parents.

Transcript

Jo Hobbis (00:02)
Well, I am so excited to welcome my guest today, Meredith Anne Miller. Meredith's a pastor, a writer and a parent. She loves to help grownups and the kids they love engage with the Bible and faith in fun, life-giving, fit for real life ways. She is super qualified to do this brilliantly. And I have been following her on Instagram for about three years. So you can imagine my delight when I reached out to her and said,

Hey, can we talk about your new book? And she said, yes, honestly, I'm a little bit fangirling. So before I get carried away, let's get into it. Meredith, welcome to Hope Cake. Tell us a little bit about your new book. What is the concept behind Wonder?

Meredith Miller (00:42)
Thank you.

So,

Wonder is a little bit like if a kids Bible that gave you language for telling stories to kids  had a mashup with a study Bible that gave you the background and commentary notes that you know are important to understanding what else is going on in the passage. And if those notes were kind of filtered through the lens of things kids often wonder about or ask you questions for.

And so it is there to kind of be this grownups guide to exploring the Bible with kids. And a lot of it came from,  in my first book, we talked a lot about how we talk about Scripture with kids. What's our goal? What are we really trying to help them with? And as that resonated with people and they were like, so what kids Bible do I buy? And at the time there weren't oodles of spaces for that. And I think a lot of families enjoy having a library with different voices, different tones. And so

 this project sort of flowed out of people resonating with wanting to invite their kids into Scripture in really not just like healthy and fun ways, but also like grounded and scholarship oriented sorts of ways, but recognizing their kids are still eight. So that's where we got it from.

Jo Hobbis (02:05)
Yeah, yeah that's very cool. You've been really clear that it is not a kids Bible. So, so and you sort of touched there on how it's different but yeah can you explain that a bit more? How is it different to a kids Bible?

Meredith Miller (02:11)
It is not a kid's Bible.

So part of it will simply be,  it's not illustrated, right? Which is probably the most common piece. And in exchange, that means I got to include 52 stories. When you add illustration, you often don't get to have as many stories or all your stories have to be the same length, or you only get one picture per story. And all of those didn't feel like great things. And so that was part of it. And part of why it's not a kids Bible is that you give a Bible to the kid and then off they go.

And that's good in its own way. One of the things that I think a lot of adults feel is a desire to feel like they could talk about the Bible with their kid, but they get stuck feeling like they don't know enough.  Or what if I get asked a question that's beyond what I do know? And so Wonder was really oriented around trying to help with those things for the adults so that it could be this tool you could go to that keeps you in a conversation with them that

helps when your kid brings you a question or a thought or a situation, it gives you a place that you can turn to to be like, all right, how do I kind of want to think this through? How might I want to talk about this with them?  And so that was kind of the piece that I felt like there was opportunity for in the midst of what else we sort of have in this kids' faith and Bible resource space.

Jo Hobbis (03:38)
Yeah, yeah, I love that and it's something that I wish I'd had when my kids were small, they're both bigger than me now, two boys, big teenagers, but it would have been, it's alarming how quickly it happens. But yeah, anyway, I think it's a fabulous resource for that reason. I'm really interested in the stories that you've chosen to include then, so you had space for a few more than you might have done if you'd had pictures, but

Meredith Miller (03:48)
Mine are on the way to that.

I know, I know.

Jo Hobbis (04:08)
I think people are going to be really surprised that Leviticus is in there for a start. Ouch! And Rahab. Like, I was like, Rahab? ⁓ are these really stories for children? So, tell me how you got there.

Meredith Miller (04:13)
Yep, it is. Yep.

Yeah.

What's funny though is the other side of that are the stories I left out. I mean, there are a bunch of typical kids Bible stories that I did not include because I don't think they're for kids, right? And so, hey, looking at you Noah's Ark, like we're not doing that.  And so part of my hope was to pick a selection of stories that helped both kids and adults think about the overarching narrative of Scripture.

Jo Hobbis (04:30)
⁓

Okay

Meredith Miller (04:54)
Like how do we grab individual instances that can help thread a bigger through line? And so we did 10 for the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. And then we did 10 for Life in the Land from Joshua to Malachi, 10 Jesus stories and 10 for the church carrying on. And then in addition to those 40, there's five for Christmas, there's seven for Easter. And that's what makes up the collection. And so,

Jo Hobbis (05:04)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Meredith Miller (05:20)
Part of a story like Leviticus is if you're gonna understand what's happening at the beginning of God establishing a family that God would dream would be a blessing to the world, you have to wrestle with something about the law because it was such an integral piece of how they understood their unique expression of this in their ancient Near Eastern world. And so then it became really fun to be like, how do you turn Leviticus into a story and how do you help kids see that the specific examples

ancient and odd as they may be actually really resonate with something that matters a lot to us of they often protect the planet or people or animals or some combination. And that's actually really cool. It's just takes some help to see it. And so that part felt really fun. I love that part. And, and Rahab, feel like is such a great early example of

Jo Hobbis (06:07)
Yeah, I'm so glad you've given us the help. Thank you.

Meredith Miller (06:19)
how much God is on the move for everyone, right? This non-Jewish person whose story ends with, I am choosing your Yahweh God to be my God. And there's so much we don't know about how she landed in that conclusion. There's so much missing from the narrative, but nobody says, ⁓ honey, sorry. Like that's not for you.  And...

Jo Hobbis (06:41)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (06:45)
then I can't help but be like, this is an interesting story we chose to include not only in the Old Testament library, but then the genealogy of Jesus shows up and it's wild to me. So it's like, if she's gonna be in Jesus's genealogy, I would love help as a parent to answer who she is and why she matters. And so there her story is.

Jo Hobbis (07:06)
Brilliant. Yeah, let's zoom in a bit more on the Rahab story. Because the thing that most grownups remember about Rahab is that she's a prostitute, right? But in your notes around the story, because I have read a bit, you point out that the Bible seems to be completely uninterested in her or the spies morality, because what matters is her message about the people of Jericho in general and her own faith in particular.

Meredith Miller (07:09)
Okay.

Thank you.

Jo Hobbis (07:35)
Now I know that you are all about teaching the Bible to kids for spiritual formation so that they come to know and love Jesus and not so that they behave themselves well. But I would really like to know, do you think God is concerned about our morality?

Meredith Miller (07:57)
So I'll start with the story because we know a lot about how Rehab is a prostitute. We never talk about how that means the spies presumably went to her for her services. Like there is no other plausible reason they cross paths. And I'm sure some people would love to assume that they just must have coincidentally ended up with her, you know, because there's a spare bed, but it's not likely.

Jo Hobbis (08:09)
Right.

Meredith Miller (08:26)
And yet the story is remarkably silent on that whole circumstance. All around we have these people doing something that a lot of Christian spaces in recent years get really hung up on. And there's just nothing there.  And so I am fascinated by that and stories like it.  Shifra and Pua lie to Pharaoh. And there is no note in Exodus about that particular choice that they made.

Jo Hobbis (08:40)
Mm-hmm.

Meredith Miller (08:56)
It's only the bigger purposes that their sort of life-giving, courageous resistance brings about that is the thrust of the story. And so I have to at least wonder what the Bible does not say and, to your question, what does God think of that? Because it just goes quiet.  And there are other places where there are moral implications and there's just a lot of silence. And I don't think that means God does not care.

And I do think certainly God cares about who we are becoming. There is a reason that when we see Paul capture God forming us in the fruit of the Spirit, we also could look at those same attributes and just talk about them as morals or character or virtues. There's this overlap certainly of like, it's who you become as a person of joy and a person of gentleness and a person of patience. And so God certainly must be concerned in so far as there's connection.

But I also just can't help but wonder what that means about God's graciousness. And I can't help but wonder what it means about God's compassion and understanding for real life.  Rahab and those spies were in a really important and difficult situation. And I feel like part of God being wise, God must understand that challenge.

Jo Hobbis (10:04)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (10:26)
And I wonder if that's part of why it's so quiet on some of the more unsavory moral elements. don't, there's a lot I don't know about God's opinions about our morality because there's a lot Scripture doesn't say alongside what it does say. And so that's kind of where I find myself in that question because I'm not at all going to say God does not care that doesn't feel like it fits. But I also don't know that that God, think maybe it's more that I become unsure it's God's main priority.

Jo Hobbis (10:26)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

No.

Meredith Miller (10:57)
to make us moral. I'm not sure that's how I would describe what Israel was supposed to be to the world or what the disciples were meant to be as they followed in Jesus' footsteps to form the churches. I think it was something more beautiful and robust and probably complicated than that. I don't know, how do you read it?

Jo Hobbis (10:57)
Mm.

Mmm.

Hmm. no, don't throw it back at me. That's not fair at all.

Meredith Miller (11:19)
It's a wonderful question

though! do you like or just that bigger question? What do you make of God's desire for our morality?

Jo Hobbis (11:22)
and

No, I love that he's bigger than all of that.  And I think you're right, he's more concerned about who we're becoming than ticking the boxes or doing the right thing for other people's benefit. Like, not for other people's benefit, but for show to other people. Yeah. And I really like in the Rahab story how he uses their...

Meredith Miller (11:44)
For sure, yeah, right, for image.

Jo Hobbis (11:56)
immorality, if you like, ⁓ for his purposes. Like, my son and I have a phrase, nothing gets in the way of the plan. And, and I love that ⁓ nothing gets in the way of God's Like, that's, it's there, it's there in the Bible as this is what happened. And you know, we know what happened next, but ⁓ perhaps that wasn't what was expected or I don't know. I don't know.

Meredith Miller (12:25)
Yeah,

Jo Hobbis (12:25)
I'm wondering too. ⁓

Meredith Miller (12:25)
yeah. Yeah, are they an obstacle to the plan and then God works around it? Are they part of the plan because you, God wants Rahab uniquely included to point to just how grand the grace is and how wide the inclusion is meant to be that it really, this can be for absolutely anyone and we mean it, look at her. Cause we are so inclined to do the limiting and the gatekeeping. So it's.

Jo Hobbis (12:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah,

Meredith Miller (12:53)
It's certainly a story that pushes us on that. Yeah.

Jo Hobbis (12:53)
oh yeah. Right, yeah, I mean, I've got a whole other podcast on that, Meredith. So if you want to go back and listen to what me and Christie talk about for six hours, you go for it. Anyway, I think you have done a brilliant job of making these stories accessible to kids. And you talk a little bit about the difference between kiddifying a story and making it kid accessible. So can you unpack that a little bit for me?

Meredith Miller (13:00)
Yeah.

You

Yes.

Yeah, these are terms that I kind of coined to help me filter whether or not a story should be for a kid. And so sort of to what we said before about the ones I opted in for, like Rahab and the ones I left out, like Noah's Ark. To me, a kid accessible story is one where I, as the adult who maybe knows more about the Bible, can figure out how to tell it to a kid in a way that is aligned

with where I think that story's really meant to go. What I think that the writer was trying to help us see, what I think God is up to, that there is language and phrasing and such that I can bring to a kid, but that eventually someday if the kid reads the text for themselves, they feel like they match. Kidifying, on the other hand, is a term that I developed to try and explain how we might look at a story.

realize there's things that aren't for kids and in order to tell the kid, we have to basically change the story. And then someday they would read it and be like, wait, that's not what it's about at all. And I think that a certain vegetable cartoon doing David and Bathsheba as I'm jealous of your rubber ducky is a kidified version that although there might be a possessive theme, that's really pretty far afield.

Jo Hobbis (14:35)
Right, yeah.

Mm.

Meredith Miller (14:43)
to what's

going on. But if we were to tell Rahab's story, and I don't go into detail about her line of work or how the spies cross paths with her, but then someday you read it. And what I have said is they look down on her for how she went about surviving. And then you go and you learn she is a prostitute. It's like, okay, well, those are of a fit.  And so I found it to be really helpful because I don't want to make the choice

Jo Hobbis (15:06)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (15:13)
as someone who does not know somebody's child for which stories are for them. And so I got to choose for wonder which ones I like and think all kids can be invited into. But I also think it's a helpful way as an adult for me to look at, is this one right for my kid right now? And if I can tell them a faithful version, then it is. And if I can't, I can just save it for later. If it's gonna be this kidified,

Jo Hobbis (15:30)
Mm-hmm.

Meredith Miller (15:39)
turn it into a moral or leave out a massive important detail or pivot what it's actually going for, then it's just not for them right now. It's not a forever thing. It's just waiting for them to grow into being able to access those themes. So that's really what those two are meant to filter. Go ahead, sorry.

Jo Hobbis (15:54)
So cheers.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I was going to say, I'm questioning how important it is that we read actual Scripture with kids and whether it is enough to have read it ourselves and then paraphrase it. And like, I get the missing out the gory details and coming back to them later, the sort of skip and save thing that you talk about a lot. But 

Yeah, are we missing out something important if we're not reading actual Scripture?

Meredith Miller (16:29)
Well, I don't know if there's one set answer for that for all children, all families.

Jo Hobbis (16:36)
No, that's true.

Meredith Miller (16:37)
And so I think some kids really enjoy the way Scripture is written and kind of the fun weirdness of it and the details and the various narrator styles. And I think some kids can't do that. Like it's gonna take them a while before they can enter into the Bible in its style and not just feel very lost. And... 

I think my bias is probably to say if kids know the story of Scripture, they know Scripture. And I think we can do a lot with the way kids enter into story and make connections from stories that sometimes I think it's sort of underrated. I also think, I mean, of course there's just so much, like I love the Bible. So I'm always excited when a kid is excited to move from

Jo Hobbis (17:22)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (17:35)
story conversations and themes into the text itself. And I think the flip side of why I find myself hesitant at times is because I hate the stories I hear about kids who are given the whole Bible too early. And the getting lost in it keeps them from it maybe for longer than they would have had we just held off. Right? So you hand a seven-year-old the full text because they're a good reader. And they

Jo Hobbis (17:57)
Mm. Mm.

Hmm.

Meredith Miller (18:05)
can't make heads or tails of it, perhaps in this hypothetical. And then they shove it away until they're 13. But maybe you could have just held off until they were 10 and could do certain things in a story, you know? And so there's some reading of our kids in that  that I feel like becomes really important. I always bristle against, and this was not something you said, I'm not trying to suggest you did.

Jo Hobbis (18:16)
Yeah.

Meredith Miller (18:32)
I wrestle against any of the folks that are telling us we're all supposed to be doing it the same way. There's just no, right? Like, and so the question of like, well, should they all be in real Scripture? All? I don't know. By what age? You know? So I tend to, if you make me yes or no, I'm gonna be like, no, definitely not. Because there's too many exceptions for me to be willing to say that's the rule.

Jo Hobbis (18:37)
Right, yeah, yeah.

yeah no you're right it's totally individual

Okay, okay. So I know you're going to correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like you've written the book with parents who are a little bit familiar with the Bible in mind. But in our church we are seeing more and more families coming because their kids are interested in Christianity and sometimes the parents have got little or no church background at all. So what about parents who are also new to faith or whole families that are coming to faith all together?

Could Wonder work for them as well.

Meredith Miller (19:33)
I really hope so. I think that a kids Bible is actually a really wonderful way for someone who doesn't feel like they know Scripture to get started. Because I think a lot of the strong kids Bibles each help someone new to Scripture to see the big themes and to see the patterns across stories and, and helpfully lets them only maybe touch down on Leviticus for a quick sec before they can just like move right along. And  so I think

Jo Hobbis (19:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Meredith Miller (20:04)
that that was part of the hope with Wonder is if you are someone who feels like you don't know a lot of Scripture for whatever reason, then you could read it from the real text and then read my paraphrase and then read some notes and have your bearings a bit  in that set of stories. And I think there are others. think of NT Wright's Kids Bible offering in the last couple of years because it is a lot of stories. It is a very large collection, a hundred something, right? Probably more than a

Jo Hobbis (20:21)
Mm.

All right.

Meredith Miller (20:34)
probably more than a kid actually needs.  But if I were an adult who was new, I think that that would be a really helpful way to get started in Scripture alongside the big old honkin, you know, real thing. And so  I think it is important for adults to have tools that keep the project small enough to be sustainable. And

Jo Hobbis (20:36)
you

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Meredith Miller (21:03)
I think certain kinds of commentaries of which I hope Wonder is one offer that, right? I think the Bible for Everyone series on the other hand, if I were an adult and I was like, I don't know anything, I think that's a really great series to be a starting point because of its voice, because of its style, because it keeps it small enough to be realistic. Like none of us want to go reading giant commentaries unless we're you and I and we're weird.

Jo Hobbis (21:21)
Mm-hmm.

Do you know, I've never read a giant commentary actually. can't, I'm, you know, yeah, sorry. I'm distancing myself from that. I'm really sorry. But this is why you're the expert and I am not, and I'm the one asking the questions. So I really love the idea of helping kids fall in love with Scripture though, because you know, that's just wonderful.

Meredith Miller (21:29)
well, okay, so then I'm just weird.

That's okay. I'm okay with that. I understand. I know it's weird.

Jo Hobbis (21:56)
Tell me about your own relationship with the Bible and those giant commentaries. When did you fall in love?

Meredith Miller (22:04)
I can go back to early childhood years, probably second, third grade is when a woman named Carolyn Hammack was my Sunday school teacher. And we were all just our grade in a classroom of a modular style building with blue industrial carpet and a flannel graph. And Carolyn told Bible stories in ways that made it very clear that Jesus was lovely.

And  so there was not a sense that we had to hide any of the other parts of Scripture that were more complicated. She was just great at helping kids understand what the center of the story was. And then I can look at, I would say college for me was big because I did choose to do a religious studies degree. And the scholarship side for me is just really cool.

makes it more complicated in ways that have been really helpful to me because my teen years, the Bible got simple. Everything told me how to be good and act right. And that was just a bit of my youth group's culture. And you were supposed to have your quiet times where you only looked for what it was saying to you alone. And it was nice to go through that season and get to some adults being like, yeah, there's all this other stuff about what

Jo Hobbis (23:10)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (23:31)
is happening in a community from long ago and far away. There's all these cool weird word things. that complicating of Scripture was really, really helpful for my faith because then it took off some of the pressure to always, every time I sat down, leave with a lesson. And it took off some of the pressure to always read it right versus being able to read it with curiosity or being able to be interested in

Jo Hobbis (23:56)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (24:00)
the places where it goes silent on something I would have expected it to say. yeah, academics sort of helped me feel like I was free to do that in Scripture. And I know other people receive that same message from all kinds of other ways, but that was actually really big for me. And then I think watching my kids respond to Bible stories has probably been the other big one in recent years as far as I've loved watching what Scripture.

Jo Hobbis (24:16)
Yeah.

Meredith Miller (24:27)
is doing in them and they are coming to it really differently than the experiences I had just because of variety pieces of our family life, our church life. And a lot of it is they want to hear me tell stories. And so we just do so much more verbal storytelling. ⁓ And then they interrupt like crazy because we've helped invite them into that. And so the same story goes in different directions each time. And that has been so neat to watch when I think about how Scripture's God breathed.

Jo Hobbis (24:32)
that's interesting.

Meredith Miller (24:57)
this is one of the ways I think it happens is same story and yet a totally different conversation than the last time we talked about it. And I do really think the Spirit of God is animating the way we are connecting that story into these new questions or new places. And when that is happening in a child you love, you can't help but love the Bible that is helping make that happen, the way God is using the Bible to help make that happen for me.

Jo Hobbis (25:20)
Yeah,

yeah, that's really great because kids hear the same stories over and over and I so I lead with the  seven to 10 year olds in my church and  I get quite a lot from them. We've heard this. We've heard this one before. And so I'm really interested how you have that how you have those new conversations then.

Meredith Miller (25:37)
Yes. Yep. Yep.

a couple of things have been working for me recently. Sometimes I front like I try to preempt it. Like if I know that's what's gonna happen, I say, I know you know this one. So before I start, I need you to start pretending you've never heard it before. Okay, so you need fresh ears, fresh eyes. Yes, you do know what's gonna happen, but I want you to pretend you're someone watching it happen for the very first time. And then we start. So it acknowledges like, yeah, you're smart. Yeah, you know, let's do this together.

Jo Hobbis (26:01)
⁓

Meredith Miller (26:15)
And then I regularly stop along the way whenever I storytell. And so I'll be like, okay, so remember you're not you, you're this person on the street watching Jesus or in hearing him say what he said, or you're this other character in here. What are you thinking and feeling? And like, what would you think was gonna happen and why? And so sometimes working through something that acknowledges that they know it and invites them in a different path I found has been really helpful. And then,

Sometimes, and this is part of why I love the commentary notes in Wonder, this came up with our kids at our church for Christmas, familiar story, like, you know, of course. And so that was part of our on-ramp was like, how well do you think you know this story? Like rate how well you know it. And they all kind of like threw their hands at various degrees. And then I said, okay, you're right. And also, can I tell you a part of this story that I don't know that we talk about a lot?

Jo Hobbis (26:54)
Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Meredith Miller (27:13)
And then I grabbed some background context, just like one nugget. And we spent our time chatting about, in the case of the Christmas story, how  the emperor is the one who has good news of great joy for all people because he has brought the Pax Romana to the empire through his might. And so isn't it interesting when the angels make that announcement? And why do you think they chose to say it that way? And what do you think happens to this baby if...

Jo Hobbis (27:27)
You

Meredith Miller (27:42)
the empire gets wind of this pronouncement about who they are. and so we just kind of went with this one little nugget and we got to the end and I said, I am curious. Did you guys already know that part? And in that group, they're like, actually, no. And all I said was, isn't it cool? not like see nee-ner nee-ner, I still have something to teach you, but like, yeah, isn't it cool how this story we do every single year still has other

Jo Hobbis (28:04)
Yeah.

Meredith Miller (28:12)
interesting pieces that bring it to life in a new way. And the whole Bible actually works like that. So when you guys get to a story and I'm going to bring you one that you've heard, remind me that you know it and I'll try to find you something that maybe you don't know about it. And we'll do that together. And so I think that it's okay to invite them in, in their then that's where you get to add like a deeper,

a deeper little layer or a fun little nugget. And I think the tone of that, this idea of like, hey, I've got another fun fact then for you since you're smart. Because you always want to honor the kid for what they do know. Like that's great that they know it and that's great that they remember it. And I always know that the level of sass they bring means I have to remind myself of that.

Jo Hobbis (28:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's

brilliant. The other thing I really love in the book is the I wonder questions that you include with every story, because that is a really good conversation starter technique that I use all the time with my kids group. I just love that it opens up the possibility, doesn't it, that there's more to explore and that there doesn't have to be a fixed answer. It gives the kids a bit of agency in the conversation, I think. But.

Meredith Miller (29:12)
always yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Jo Hobbis (29:28)
I was thinking on this and we really live in a world where we get answers at the touch of a button. And I think that this generation of kids in particular, they really don't have any concept of what it's like not to know. Like my 18 year old said to me, mom, what did you do if you didn't know what year a song had come out and you didn't have Google? I was like,

Meredith Miller (29:35)
Mm.

Jo Hobbis (29:58)
you asked someone or you just didn't know like you have to get okay with not knowing okay so why do you think it's important to wonder and how do we help kids get comfortable with wondering and maybe not knowing?

Meredith Miller (29:59)
Right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I agree with you on both points of what wonder space opens up in, especially Bible conversations is so great for kids. And yes, they are not practiced in that in the same way. And,  it's certainly easier the earlier you start,  making that sort of part of how you approach faith conversations and conversations about the Bible. But

It's also never too late if you've never really tried going for some mystery and some wonder and some uncertainty and your kid is older than you can always say, hey, this is gonna be weird, but I wanna try it. So humor me.  And I think that it might just be that it's helpful to our faith to be humble about all we don't know. And so when I think about part of why I love wonder questions and why I'm so

Jo Hobbis (31:11)
Mmm.

Meredith Miller (31:16)
grateful for the, I mean, those are not unique to me, to your point, like churches and curricula have used this as an intentional learning tool for a very long time. And I think part of where the tool matches something that matters to us as a faith community is like, we come to all of this with a certain amount of humility about the fact that this is a book from a time that we do not live in and a culture we are not part of a certain amount of humility about like the spirit of God does really

of remarkable things with this book and does different things with this book in different cultures and times and places. And so there's something about the way wondering, I think, helps foster that, that is really beautiful and kind of why it's worth pursuing. And then I also think sometimes kids knowing adults don't know is comforting because at some point down the line, something's going to hit them where there isn't going to be an answer available despite how much they have at their fingertips.

And if they've never practiced or heard, like seen modeled adults being like, this is how we grow comfortable with I don't know.  Then it's going to become an even more significant crisis. And a lot of the faith stuff isn't going to Google when it comes for them, whatever the question is or the, how do I work this through? Or here's what's happened in my life and my faith story doesn't fit.  Having practiced a certain amount of

Jo Hobbis (32:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Meredith Miller (32:45)
mystery and not knowing in other lower stakes ways is a really helpful gift for a kid when eventually something important does come and it's not the first time ever that they've been  in a mystery space, even if it's not pleasant. yeah. And then I think sometimes it can be fun for them to be experts and you can maybe bring that alongside, right? Like I think it is very fun to teach kids how to use a Bible search engine.

Jo Hobbis (33:00)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Meredith Miller (33:14)
and not only ask them to be in a physical book because they know it's there, but they don't know what to do with it. It's the same as like how we used to flip the pages open and just like point and be like, maybe this is what God wants for me today.

Jo Hobbis (33:17)
⁓

I'm glad it wasn't just me who did that.

Meredith Miller (33:29)
Of course, 100%. Just see where the wind blows the pages. so there's that flip side of like, I think it's kind of neat and fun to have kids pull up the tech device and a Biblegateway.com and be like, hey, here's how you could use this if you do have a question or you're wondering a thing so that you sort of empower the part of them that's used to touch screen to maybe do it well. So it's not like it has to be all mystery either. And I think

Jo Hobbis (33:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Meredith Miller (33:58)
Probably that helps kids feel more satisfied when there's a balance.

Jo Hobbis (34:02)
Yeah, yeah, so cool. I've got a question which is kind of unrelated to the book but I just want to ask you anyway, just because it's nice to get inside your head. So I hear people talk all the time, well maybe not all the time, but often about the God of the Old Testament as if God is in some way different in the Old Testament.

Meredith Miller (34:11)
That's great.

go with that.

Yeah.

Jo Hobbis (34:32)
than he is after Jesus is born. So,

Meredith Miller (34:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jo Hobbis (34:35)
I mean, what do you think? I don't think he's different. Do you think he's different? right, yeah.

Meredith Miller (34:37)
think people are really bad at, no, no, certainly not. And I actually think we're just really bad at reading the Old Testament.

Yeah, and I also I get why people think that like I'm not trying to be dismissive of why people get that impression. I think that the Old Testament is really hard, right? Like there's just it's really hard and.

Jo Hobbis (34:54)
Mm.

Yeah,

it is really hard.

Meredith Miller (34:59)
And so I think I understand part of why we're bad at it. And actually probably some of this connects to what you just brought up about being uncomfortable with uncertainty, mystery, wondering. And so part of how I think maybe some spaces have solved that with the Old Testament is to just sort of like dismiss out the parts that are hard and like offer certainty into stories that are not offering it. 

Jo Hobbis (35:25)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (35:30)
But like the Old Testament is, it is weird. It is such a weird book. There is, the language is weird. Ancient Hebrew is hard.  I don't pretend to have any Hebrew skills left from my seminary days. are long gone. And thankfully there are tools to help bridge the gaps of my learning loss, cause I got nothing. But I also think we are really bad at reading the Old Testament and what it does offer because

Jo Hobbis (35:47)
You

Meredith Miller (36:01)
I think in part because of a misunderstanding of Scripture itself that assumes a certain amount of timelessness that Scripture does not claim. Like Scripture claims to be telling you a story from a time and a place and a people and a culture that we don't share. And we do well to activate like some holy imagination about what it might be like to be these people in this place. And

Jo Hobbis (36:10)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Meredith Miller (36:30)
Instead, a lot of Western spaces have really assumed that our culture and values and ideals can get superimposed on top of Scripture and that that's a good lens to read it through when it's really not.  At a minimum, it's not helpful. And so like one example that I think comes up to your point has to do with the conquest narratives, right? Like this conquest theme is very hard for us as

Jo Hobbis (36:46)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (36:59)
peoples, those of us who come from, you know, European and various privileged backgrounds, we look at conquest stories and maybe we look at our own colonization history and think, well, this feels really problematic because we're not connected to the Hebrews as the marginalized underdogs telling us a story. We only know stories where we are winners. And so there's a gap.

Jo Hobbis (37:14)
Hmm.

Mm.

Meredith Miller (37:28)
from the jump.  Conquest stories are a genre prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. So we hear annihilation language and we take it literally because Western Bible folks have said that that's what makes Scripture authoritative is its literal truth. not like the writers of the conquest narratives were not trying to tell us the literal truth of the battle. They were telling a battle story in the style of battle stories. And that includes

Jo Hobbis (37:49)
Mmm.

Meredith Miller (37:58)
fair amount of exaggerating. And then you have the fact that in their world, the most important thing a god does for you, the thing that makes a god good is that they order chaos. And individual human life and flourishing is not actually nearly as high of a value to them as it is to us. And that is not something that smooths out easily. So I'm not saying it as if once we know that, poof.

The Old Testament's no longer hard. But one of our biggest Old Testament challenges has to do with the amount of violence and death in the stories. And it didn't bother them like it bothers us. And we were not in their minds when they recorded these stories and when they told them to one another orally before that. We don't share the same values when it comes to why God is good. They're going to tell you that God is good because God can go forth into this chaotic world.

Jo Hobbis (38:34)
Yeah.

Meredith Miller (38:57)
and represent them and bring order and restore boundaries. And if some people die in the process, they don't really think that's a big deal. And that does not incriminate God in their world. And that's weird and hard, but also understanding it is helpful. It's like, okay, I do not share the world these people live in.  And especially if we have not personally had the opportunity to experience much

Jo Hobbis (39:09)
Mm.

Meredith Miller (39:27)
intercultural relationship. If we really have not had a lot of places where what is normal and valued and good to a community is wildly different than what we are most accustomed to, doing that with Scripture is going to feel a little unusual. It's going to be some muscle that we haven't ever really stretched. ⁓ But I think that's really the invitation of the Old Testament is to think about

it being from a very different time, place, culture, community with a whole different worldview and values. And yet it's telling us something deeply true about God. yeah, so I do get, I get the Old Testament God feeling different. And also I don't think that's true. And so when it seems true, that's a place for us to get, I think, more curious.  One of the questions I use to help

families and sometimes kids as they start to become familiar with this themselves is simply to say, if it seems bad to me, why might it have seemed good to them? Because they're certainly not out there to try and tell me a story of a scary, awful God that you have to obey or else. just, that is not the goal that the Old Testament storytellers are aiming for. They have.

Jo Hobbis (40:30)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Meredith Miller (40:46)
a testimony of God's trustworthiness that they are offering through their stories. And so if that story seems bad to me, why might it have seemed good to them? And sometimes the answer is not something I like or that I'm comfortable with, but it is an answer that I feel like is faithful to them and honoring of their time, place and culture. And so that has been a helpful question, I think, to activate some of those kinds of skills that help us work with.

Jo Hobbis (40:55)
you

Meredith Miller (41:14)
of pieces that don't reconcile as easily.

Jo Hobbis (41:17)
Mmm. Mmm. Great. Thank you. You've answered so many of my questions. I would like to know why you left out no... I know! I can tell! And I love this about you!

Meredith Miller (41:24)
I'm so glad I have about I have about 100 more as I'm saying them.

And then there's all these questions in my head within what I'm willing to say. Right. So yeah.

Jo Hobbis (41:41)
I know, your brain's like going all over the place, isn't it? I love it, it's brilliant. But I would really like to know why you left out Noah's Ark.

Meredith Miller (41:51)
a terrible story for children. Because the story is that a deeply grieved God decided to move forward with remaking the world in a way where basically everybody dies.

Jo Hobbis (41:53)
Why?

Mm-hmm. I love that. So there's a kid in my

group who has brought that very thing up and that's why I've asked you the question, to be honest, on behalf of her.

Meredith Miller (42:13)
Yes. And so

this is a, it is my prime example of a kidified story. Most of the time when this story is brought into a kid's space, it's either about how the animals that got on the boat were cute and it just utterly glosses over the destruction. And so kids like almost miss it. Like the rain came down and the floods came up and

Jo Hobbis (42:22)
Mm-hmm.

Meredith Miller (42:42)
And it's told in a way where they're like, just please ignore all the death that that would have brought about. And the other part that is very much not for kids is that it all stems from God and God's wisdom and God's emotional reality being just like deeply grieved by the suffering that evil brings upon not just humanity, but all of creation. And

So to me, the first thing a kid needs to be capable of before we ever start with Noah is understanding why God might feel that way. so if a young child knows that from experience, that's a kid who needs care, not Noah's ark. And then for the rest of kids, that tends to be something that hits more like age 10, 11, 12. Like their sensibility of

Jo Hobbis (43:21)
Mmm.

Mm. Mm.

Meredith Miller (43:41)
what the world can be comes in there. And then you say, yeah, there was actually this story.  And so I just can't find a version of the story that is what the story is trying to do that I can also give to a six year old  without just making it scary for no reason, right? Because this seems bad. Like mass death and destruction seems bad. And why might it have seemed good to them? Because

Jo Hobbis (43:58)
Hmm.

Mm.

Meredith Miller (44:11)
God accomplishing God's purposes of and like restarting creation, right? It's a creation 2.0 kind of experience. God's allowed to do that in a way that does not preserve all human life because that's not the value in their world. And we might be really unsettled by that, but the storyteller is not. 

And the fact that God would preserve anybody, we're meant to see that that is like a really gracious thing on God's part. Like they would see that God has full authority to just go nuclear on the entire thing. And the fact that God would choose anyone and any creatures to spare at all and to actually stick with earth is like, my goodness, isn't that just like the kindest thing to have not just like gone whole, wholly into?

Jo Hobbis (45:02)
Mmm.

Meredith Miller (45:05)
being done with us.

And so if I can't, if a kid can't get there, then the story's not right for them yet. ⁓ And it doesn't mean that we as adults are like, that totally solves it. I don't mind. But we as adults are also more practiced in holding the dissonance and how that can be perhaps true of what the narrator wants to have us see. And also like, we don't like it and it still feels troubling. that, yeah. So I don't do Noah's Ark. just don't, I cannot find a way that I think

Jo Hobbis (45:14)
Alright.

Yeah.

Meredith Miller (45:38)
is faithful to the story and honoring of a five-year-old.

Jo Hobbis (45:43)
Good, great. Thank you for answering that question. It has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you, Meredith. Thank you so, so much for joining me on Hope Cake. It's been amazing. Tell us when the book is out and how do we get it and all those things.

Meredith Miller (45:52)
Same. Thank you for having me.

So Wonder releases on March 3rd and it is available wherever books are sold from the moment you are listening to this on. And everything else I write or make to help with  having this kind of conversation with kids and faith can be found through my website, which is meredithannemiller.com. And that'll kind of route you to other sorts of options that might be a good fit as well. And book information would even be there. So if you lose track of the title at some point, 

Find my name and you'll be on a good track.

Jo Hobbis (46:34)
Excellent, thank you so much. I hope we can chat again about something else soon.

Meredith Miller (46:37)
thank you.

Me

too, go easier next time. No, I love it. I love it. This is the important stuff, right? This is the stuff that we all kind of wonder when we love God, love the Bible and love our kids. And so I'm so grateful that you raise it because this is what's real for so many of us as we want to be with our kids in this. So thank you for what you're doing. Thanks for having me.

Jo Hobbis (46:43)
No  chance.

Thank you.