The Curse’s Significance

A wide-eyed kindergartner fidgets in his chair as he listens to a tale he’s heard many times before.

A kind lady, his Sunday school teacher, tells about a bad snake that lied to a nice couple named Adam and Eve. They ate an apple they weren’t supposed to eat, then hid behind bushes and tried to make clothes out of leaves. Soon, God made them get out of the Garden of Eden, and some angels with swords made sure they never got back in.

The Curse: If the subject is taught at all, that’s about the extent of the teaching. Unfortunately, as the wide-eyed kindergartner ages, the church adds little depth to the teaching. He never learns about the Curse’s significance in explaining the gospel or the evils in our real world.

What he does learn at school and through the media is the unspoken understanding that the kind lady at church was wrong; what she teaches is naïve, unsophisticated, and unintelligent. Sunday school is the place of stories. Monday-through-Friday school is the place of facts.

This issue of Answers is designed to help change that erroneous idea.

In addition to articles on a variety of other topics, including a special “cartoon” version of Kids Answers, this issue includes an exceptional section about the Curse. It fills in the gaps with important teaching you won’t find anywhere else. That event, recorded in Genesis 3, is crucial to our understanding of the world and the realities that we and our loved ones confront every day.

This issue raises and answers questions that are at the root of all of our society’s problems . . . questions that far too many of today’s churches and schools have chosen to avoid.

God bless the ladies with the kindergartners. Let’s not let the teaching end at that level. (By the way, the Bible doesn’t say it was an apple!)

For the Creator’s glory,

Dale Mason, Publisher

P.S. As of July 1, a “digital edition” of this entire magazine is also available for subscription. Excellent for your archives and for students, overseas missionaries, etc. See page 7.