So what did David do wrong? (Which brought me back to where I started: trying not to explain sex to someone else’s five-year-old.) I think the original Sunday school script got at least one thing right; the seventh commandment is about the sanctity of marriage. And to explain David’s sin to our kids, we have to be clear that his sin was breaking God’s law for marriage.

It was an innocent request–“Megan, would you teach my Sunday school class for me next week?”–and an equally naïve acceptance. Little did I anticipate the biblical scholarship necessary for an hour on Sunday morning with the five- and six-year-olds.

When I opened the teacher’s manual on Saturday evening, I discovered the problem. I had not agreed to a nice little Bible lesson on “Adam names the animals” or “Jesus welcomes the children.” Nope. Of all the stories in the curriculum, the lot fell to me to teach about David and Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11).

Right from the beginning, I knew I wasn’t going to parse some of the stories’ details—was it rape? was it adultery?—but I still couldn’t avoid the essential problem of explaining sexual sin to little kids.

It seemed to me I had two options. The first option was to use the script provided by the curriculum and say that David and Bathsheba were pretending to be married: “David acted like Bathsheba was his wife, but she wasn’t. This was wicked.”

My policy with my own three children is to always tell the truth. I believe the Bible to be complete truth, and I want to maintain that intrinsic truthfulness as I paraphrase and retell and explain it to my kids. This doesn’t mean I tell them every gory detail, but I also don’t say anything untrue. As they grow, I want them to build on the foundation of truth I’ve given them, not to question everything they’ve been told.

And I wasn’t convinced that “David acted like Bathsheba was his wife” was true. In a godly marriage, a husband does not force or manipulate his wife to have sex with him. David was not simply acting like a husband does. Furthermore, in the Biblical text, Nathan’s subsequent parable (2 Sam. 12:1-9) makes this point. The poor man had a sheep that he loved and cared for and treated as a pet. The rich man stole this sheep. Does the rich man then make it his pet? No, he does not. He kills it and eats it. David wasn’t pretending Bathsheba was his wife while playing house with her. He was killing and eating her.

Tell that to a kindergartener.

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