Do our young people view the Bible as fiction or fact?

Not long ago a student mentioned to me that in her high school scripture class there was a girl who listened very politely, seemed very interested in everything that she said, but in the end said “They’re just made up stories after all”. She engaged at the level of interesting religious beliefs but couldn’t believe that the bible was anything other than a made-up story because it was just “what a few different men got together and wrote down”. Fiction rather than Fact. Legend rather than History.

Not that long ago we could presume in Australian society that when you taught a scripture class that the children would have grown up with a general respect of the bible and of the story of Jesus, even if they did not believe it themselves. Now young people are very sceptical about the reliability of the bible. The last few years have been a bit of an onslaught against the bible from the diatribes of Richard Dawkins and others to the bizarre fictions of the Da Vinci Code and the “discovery” of the gospel of Judas. All these have contributed to a greater scepticism.

I was convicted after this conversation of the necessity of looking again at history and gathering the evidence to show the historical reliability of the bible. The problem is, of course, that young people are easily bored with lots of information that seems dry. John Dickson’s video at Easter time was fantastic, but still a little sophisticated. I think there is a place for someone to prepare high quality materials for children and youth, to show them the historical evidence for the Christian faith. We can no longer just presume they will assume “Its from the bible, so its true”!

Has anyone out there prepared scripture lessons or resources that others might be able to use?