What Does the Bible Say about That?

The Bible is filled with advice about all aspects of our life, but finding which scriptures apply to a given situation can be a challenge, especially for kids who are new to studying the scriptures.


What Does the Bible Say about That? is a charming book by Carolyn Larsen, that covers over 300 topics like patience, kindness, jealousy, planning, and even homework. Each topic has a simple one page summary with scripture references, commentary, and a daily goal related to the topic. This book, published by Crossway Books, is written for 8-12 year olds, and deals with issues that are important in their lives as well as topics that apply to all ages.

By taking everyday topics and relating them to scriptures, this book is a gentle way to teach children how to study the scriptures and apply the teachings to their own lives. I have been using it with my 8 year old. Each morning we read a topic together, then look up the quoted scriptures in our KJV (the book uses the English Standard Version). This is helping my son learn WHERE to find the quoted scriptures. We then compare and talk about the versions. We are LDS and have also been looking for related scriptures in the Book of Mormon.

I would recommend this as a book for parents to use with their children. From an LDS perspective, I only noticed 3 topics that don't match up exactly with LDS doctrine, (Hell, Salvation, and the Trinity) and they were presented close enough that it was easy to explain and expand.

Some of the topics are very similar to another, like Honesty and Integrity, but the commentary is different even when the quoted scriptures are the same. Even with 300 topics, there are several important ones missing, like Baptism, Jesus, and Savior, but that is probably because different denominations would present those topics differently.

Overall, my son and I have enjoyed the book and will continue using it for our morning devotion time together. It has been a good way to show him how the Bible can answer his questions and that it has important information on almost every topic.

You can find more information about this book at www.crossway.org/blog