Matthew 7: An Interpretation

We've been reading through the Bible this year (I'm already behind of course but I'm gonna take that afternoon "our program" suggests and get caught up) and particularly Matthew with the kids. This sometimes seems for better or for worse with their understanding and it's pretty much the same with me as I don't particularly like how harsh people talk to each other (i.e. you brood of vipers!) and I don't much like words like "murder", etc. But that's the Bible and life generally, if we aren't too glossy about life with our kids, isn't it?

Anyways, these yucky things are not what generally trip my kids up and into questions. It's usually goes something more like tonite, for example, when reading Matthew 7 to them where it is Jesus talking to the Pharisees about them being concerned with eating clean and not unclean food versus being concerned with having a clean heart and what flows from it. (Loved stumbling on this now, because this issue is so our neighborhood and I'm thinking about that bacon fat next to the stove smelling up my house) Jesse asked some question about this, as to his ears it needed some interpretation, so I gave what I thought was the most kid-friendly and intelligible answer I could muster up. Well, apparently one can never quite get their head around the Bible (this I know to be true myself) as exemplified by Jesse's response (complete with hand motions). "Well, you know mom, it's not like we would eat green eyeball soup." I said "Right Jesse and blah, blah, blah", something similar to what I had explained before. And then Luci got out of bed, came over to me and said, "Umm, you know, we eat lots of vegetable from the ground but we would never eat poison mushrooms." At that point, I decided we would read right through Matthew 7 and receive it for the time being and not really worry about getting it all straight.