Parable of the Sparrow and Two Sisters

Two little sisters, after listening to the biblical story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, said to their dad:

"Dad, if Lena and I were in paradise, we would never eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After all, God didn’t allow for it to be touched, isn't that right, dad?

“Correct,” the father smiled and put the children to bed.

The next morning, the father got up before everyone else, caught a sparrow in the yard and put it in a saucepan. Having woken up the girls, he showed them the saucepan, placed it on the windowsill of the open window in the kitchen and said:

How a Horror Movie Inspired Me To Begin Studying the Bible

By John Sanidopoulos

It was 1988. I was twelve years old. My aunt was babysitting my older two sisters and I and she decided to take us to the movies. There were no good PG rated movies my aunt wanted to see, but then she saw a movie was starring Demi Moore that she did really want to see, however it was rated R. My aunt asked me if I wanted to see it, but I was nervous to see a rated R horror movie, as I was easily frightened by horror films as a child, and this would also be the very first rated R movie I would ever see in a theater. I gave in, half excited and half nervous. The movie we were going to watch was called The Seventh Seal.

My Childhood Introduction to the Bible (2 of 5)

...continued from part one

A few years passed, and now I was at a point where I knew many Bible stories at a very basic level, especially from the Old Testament, and they moved me, but I didn't know how to theologically tie it all together. After all, I was in elementary school with no one to really teach me, but I was discovering these things on my own. I was also growing up, had just left all my friends when I moved to a new town and entered a new school, and I was often alone. Then something happened that forever changed my life and tied everything together for me. It had to do with that one part of the Bible I needed to hear that I never understood before.

When I was ten years old, my temperament was somewhat nihilistic and angry. My mind was often occupied with death and the meaning of life. Though I was born and raised a Greek Orthodox Christian, theologically what made most sense to me was that life was but a dream within a dream, that I was living outside of reality, and my real self was some cosmic entity who imagined my present reality; it was all nothing but a figment of my imagination. Trouble often found me, and if my parents punished me for it, then all I could feel was hatred for them. They were even ready to send me to military school, since to them my future was bleak. If left unchecked for long, no doubt I would have grown up to be a model rebellious teenager.

At the time I was forced to attend Greek school twice a week after regular school. The previous year I had a horrible Greek school teacher, who was very verbally abusive to me. This eventually got her fired after it was exposed, but my experience with Greek school was not that great before this, and it just made a bad situation worse. Now I was in the fifth grade, and my teacher was a young seminarian named Yianni (he never gave us his last name) from Greece who was studying at Holy Cross School of Theology. He was actually very kind, patient and had a particular fondness for me. This was because every week for one of the two days he never taught us the Greek language, but instead talked about our Greek Orthodox faith and heritage. To me this was refreshing, and I always listened attentively, while everyone else was practically snoring. This I think is why he liked me so much.

Stories from the Old Testament: Job

My Childhood Introduction to the Bible (1 of 5)

By John Sanidopoulos

My family never had a family Bible. In fact, the Bible played no role in my upbringing. I was a typical Greek Orthodox Christian kid, who went to church once or twice a month, with the summer months off completely. I went to Greek School twice a week throughout elementary school, and Sunday School only for about two years. When I was around 6 or 7 years old my mother removed me from Sunday School and made a special request to my priest to have me serve in the altar as an altar boy. Typically you had to be at least 12 or 13 to be an altar boy, but my priest made the exception and I began to serve in the altar. I was relieved, because I was bored of coloring in sketches from the Bible which had little to no meaning, and drawing figures of three crosses on a hill. The altar was much more exciting, because I was at the center of the action, and I got to hang around mostly high school kids, even though the two main altar servers were bullies.