Odd Encounters of the Religious Kind

"Did you know that there's a witch in the Bible?" "Have you heard the story about the man who was swallowed by a giant fish?" These are the words of my childhood Sunday School teacher. She was the first person to introduce me to the strange and surprising stories found in Scripture. She was fun and outgoing, no questions were off-limits, and she never avoided the difficult or unusual passages. Her excitement is what made the Bible feel even more alive to me as a kid. I have other fond memories of learning Bible stories with this advanced piece of technology called a felt board. Little cloth characters would be placed on the felt board to tell us kids about all of the different stories in the Bible. We learned about the Flood and Noah's Ark. We learned about Jonah and the Whale. We learned about David and Goliath. And, of course, we learned about this incredible character named Jesus.But it was out on the church playground where my education was furthered even more. We would sway back and forth on the swing set, swapping Bible stories the way other kids traded baseball cards. It was on that playground that I first heard about the beheading of John the Baptist. Stories like this fed our morbid curiosity as we engaged in our own conversations of playground theology. We were wide-eyed, curious, and wondering what strange story we might uncover next. The Bible kind of felt like a hidden treasure, a secret book that we were somehow allowed to read, yet it also felt like it should be off limits. There's no way our parents actually approve of us reading this stuff!