ntent of biblical narrative aims at facilitating construction of individual and social life-span narratives with moral content, for youngsters, adolescents, and grownups alike.
Loss of Parent to Death. In discussing the effects of parental death on children, Kubler-Ross identifies the childhood conception of death in phases, observing that the concept of death for children shifts from fear of separation (0-3), to fear of mutilation (3-5), to fear of death personified (6-10) as "a bogey-man who comes to take people away" (Kubler-Ross 178-9). Sometimes the fear is complicated by resentment at the absent parent. Now there are not biblical stories that function as case studies of preschoolers; however, some stories do deal with the concept. The anguish of separation and mutilation and the challenge of reclaiming an impulse toward life are experienced by adults who lose their children. Jacob is inconsolable that Joseph, his favorite son (as he has been told), has been killed by a beast: "And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him" (Gen. 37:35--KJV).
The man whose dead daughter Jesus restores to life offers a perspective more of Jesus's ability to elicit faith than of the impulse toward life and love, but the latter point is undoubt edly present. A religious official first asks Jesus to cure his very ill daughter; Jesus later follows him home once he has been informed that his daughter has died: "As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe" (Mark 5:36). The latent challenge is to have faith, but the manifest content of the story is its success in conquering separation of parent and child.
The Crucifixion is a profound narrative of separation, though it also contains catharsis and a sense of hope. At John 19:26-27...