Christian Mamas - teaching Bible stories

[Edesanja]

Had no idea where to post this! Feel free to move.

We read Bible stories with DD (28 months) and she loves them and wants to read them over and over. Lately she has started asking more questions.
Yesterday we were reading David and Goliath and she was asking what the sling was for. I just answered "for throwing stones". "Why?" "Because David threw the stones at Goliath because he was a bad man because he didn't love God." I didn't know what to say. ( I don't want to alter the integrity of the story, but at the same time I don't want to give her ideas about things like throwing stones, hurting people... there's a whole lot of things that you wouldn't actually want your kids to do when you think about the actual details of many Bible stories!)

 I then talked about how David loved God and Goliath didn't love God, and God said David had to fight Goliath so that David and his friends would be safe so David listened to God - trying to make it more of a lesson about what we should do, rather than the details of throwing stones and killing people!

Anybody got thoughts on this? I want to teach her to read the stories and love them and learn from them, I'm just worried about her focusing on the smaller negative details.

[Katet]

I tend to think in terms of fairytales & Bible stories being a bit like that, in that they happened a LONG time ago when things happened differently & explain it in that context. My eldest (7 next week) is asking to read lots of stories like Little red riding hood again, because they are being used in literacy at school & his teacher talks about how there are different versions & understanding that side of literacy, but we also talk about how it is a story & how a wolf couldn't really eat a grandma, it is more the we need to be careful about who we talk to about where we are going.

The same goes for when we talk about Bible stories eg for David & Goliath I talked about how God can give you power to make a difference even if you feel you are small & faced with a Giant etc. So for me when there are questions about the Bible story I tend to focus on the message the story is trying to tell us rather than the actual story, if that makes sense.

[M and N's Mom]

I then talked about how David loved God and Goliath didn't love God, and God said David had to fight Goliath so that David and his friends would be safe so David listened to God - trying to make it more of a lesson about what we should do, rather than the details of throwing stones and killing people!

This is more or less how we have explained this story too.  I agree with Kate, behind every Bible story there is a message so focusing on the message seems to help.

[Edesanja]

Will keep doing this. She's still quite little but OBSESSED with the little questions and why why why. Will just tie everything back to the message of the story.
Thanks!