Student Disappointed That ‘Burning Bush’ Not A Case Of Crab Lice

He had refrained from mentioning it to any of the other children, lest discussion of the earth-shattering prospect of naughtiness in Sunday school bring the teacher to her senses and cause her to change her mind.

Peoria, IL, February 18 – A ten-year-old attending Sunday school confessed he felt let down by the discovery that the Burning Bush episode in the Biblical book of Exodus involved a fire and a shrub, and not an instance of itching, burning parasites infesting the pubic region.

Trey Newell, who enrolled three months ago in the weekly classes at Tonti Avenue Community Church, voiced disappointment after emerging from the forty-five minute lesson on Sunday, saying his anticipation at encountering something naughty in that context had made him excited since the teacher told them the previous week that the following Sunday they would learn about the burning bush. Upon realizing that the story discussed Moses’s encounter with a plant, not a case of crabs, Newell tightened his fist and furrowed his brow, but suppressed a verbal expression of his reaction, with the belated knowledge that having to explain such an outburst would not turn out well.

Melanie Stokes, who teaches Sunday school at the church, gave the eight children in her class a teaser last week at the end of a discussion of the Israelite subjugation in Egypt, hoping to get them excited. “I always try to give the kids something to look forward to,” she said. “So I told them a little bit about Moses in Midian, and how he had a miraculous revelation at a burning bush, but that I couldn’t tell them more until next time. There was a lot of buzz about that. The kids are really into it. I even told them we might sing a song about the burning bush.”

Newell, however, was looking forward to what he thought would be a departure from the family-friendly material, and grew more an more excited each day leading up to next session at the thought that the Stokes would have no choice but to talk directly about a condition that almost exclusively affects the pubic hair. He refrained from mentioning it to any of the other children, lest discussion of the earth-shattering prospect of naughtiness in Sunday school bring the teacher to her senses and cause her to change her mind.

The boy remained unaware that despite following the books of Genesis and Exodus in the order of the stories that appear there, Stokes had already omitted regaling her students with the less-than-family-friendly episodes of Noah’s drunkenness, of Lot and his daughters, and of Judah and Tamar, and had censored the stories of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Joseph with the wife of Potiphar to elide or eliminate the licentious elements.