As for Jesus being sacrificed by His Father, that is true in one sense but this God-man was turned over to the people and they crucified him. But instead of coming back and kicking everybody’s butt, he came back and forgave everyone and called them to follow him to heaven. It’s a beautiful story – the crucifixion is perhaps the worst thing that ever happened and the most wonderful thing that ever happened all at once. Jesus broke the power of death.

But don’t listen to me. If you just let the Bible speak for itself, as you said, that is more than I could ever do. You sound like a great Dad. Regards.

Can I use stories like David refusing to harm Saul, despite Saul repeatedly trying to kill David, as an example of compassion? Sure. Can I use stories about God instructing Israel to wipe out entire peoples, leaving not even the children? Not so much

And the most popular “example” of compassion from the Bible, summarized by John 3:16 (and Romans 5:7-8, and …), is a strange one. I’m not sure how useful as an example of compassion, is a story about how a God, who “has no choice” but to punish us with excruciating, eternal torture, even just for thinking sinfully, concocts a plan to allow his Son to take the punishment instead of us, demonstrates compassion. Never mind how two days and some change of being “just dead” gets considered equivalent to torturing billions without any end, but as Thomas Paine (one of our nation’s founding fathers) put it:

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

Ignoring all that, though, yeah, it’s “yay for us”… but only if you accept the position that we actually deserved such disproportionate consequences in the first place. Somehow, I think I’m going to find it difficult to teach compassion from that story.

But I think you’re missing the point: the whole point of teaching them about the Bible is to not leave anything else, to not pick and choose (or explain away with unconvincing rhetoric), but to let the Bible speak for itself. Simply reading the Bible, straight through, taking it at what it actually says, is a fairly straightforward way to let them see for themselves what virtues, and what horrors, are contained therein. I’m not going to tell them what to like and what not to like about it; I’m just going to tell them what it says, and let them choose for themselves. I don’t have to “[point] out how flawed the Bible is”, I only need to expose them to it, and teach them reason.

As to them disagreeing with me, I rather think that’s the natural and desirable result of giving them the tools to think for themselves. If they disagree, fundamentally, with me, on something, but have approached it with reason, you won’t find a prouder papa.

*Ahem*. And now that I’ve offended everything you believe… yeah, I heard you were going to be at Mount Hermon, but I guess I didn’t put two and two together: you really have to come and see us while you’re in the area! Or we can come see you, or … anyway, we should see each other. Miss you sis!