Clean or Unclean: A Flowchart

One of the ways I've been filling my time, now that I'm not in school anymore, is by preparing for the event formerly known as PMI. (Presently it's nameless...) This event is a huge to.do for Pioneer Bible Translators, where those interested in joining come to check us out, where missionaries congregate, where important training takes place, and where the semi-annual board meeting takes place.  With all this going on at the same time, it's an event planning nightmare and it requires all hands on deck.

I was given a piece of this pie as my very own: Children's Activities and Games.
Childcare is a must at an event like this and kids have to have a chance to exercise their muscles during games and exercise their heads during activities. So my job is fill the holes in the schedule with activities and games that correspond to the lessons. This endeavor has me scouring the internet but sometimes she comes up dry. And whenever I am frustrated by dry spots on the internet I take it as a personal mission to ... spritz it?

(like I did with 5 Date Ideas for a Long-Distance Relationship)

So last week's dry spot was a flowchart for determining if an animal was clean or unclean by levitical law. The lesson we're covering during not-PMI is Peter's vision at Cornelius' house. The whole: and God said, I made that! Don't call it unclean!
They're trying to have the take away for this lesson be that while children's Bible's depict pig on the blanket, God was presenting a lot of animals that probably looked really gross to Peter (the CEV translates unclean as disgusting in some places in LEV 11), bringing us to the theme of the week: the Holy Spirit: sometimes He tells you to do things you don't want to do.
This flow chart could also be used for Old Testament lessons covering... wait for it... Levitical law. It's versatile like that.

Flowchart for determining if an animal is clean or unclean according to the Old Testament Law

Click to make it bigger!!

Ok, so this was intended for ages 6-12 and is simplified for that purpose. (I'm talking to you biblical scholars and bible college students! Breathe easy!)
As you can probably deduce, if the answer to your question is yes, follow the green arrow, conversely if no, follow red arrow.
I consciously pondered leaving in terms like "chew the cud", "cleft-footed", and "carrion bird" despite the target age starting at 6. I concluded that these are major key terms for this particular discussion and we should start to familiarize the students with them. I did include a glossary at the bottom of the page including a list of examples.*
When it came to birds, there wasn't so much a list of attributes for determining if a bird was unclean as much as a list of birds. But these birds found themselves in three major categories as illustrated above. I feel comfortable with it and it's just a Sunday School activity and Peter just found out that eating all the animals is ok so I don't have to worry about someone facing hellfire and brimstone on my poor instruction!
The final question: is it a reptile? is my way of summing up the section on things that crawl on the ground, whether it moves on its belly or walks on all fours or with many feet (LEV 11:42). Listed were things like weasels, lizards, and I'm taking "with many feet" to mean centipedes. Weasels are covered in mammals and centipede fits into a 6 year olds definition of "bug" so all that remained was Thou Shalt Not Eat Reptiles.

So there you go! Flowchart. My present occupation.


*Even though sometimes the work I have my hands in now can feel so far from Bible Translation, the work I want to be up to my elbows in, there are actually a lot of parallels and overlap. Sometimes its the serving missionaries at not-PMI by entertaining their kids. Sometimes its the serving state-side missionaries by taking things like Chrildren's Activities and Games off their plate. But sometimes I get to put my training to work. Deciding on whether or not to keep key terms that mean nothing to the people in hopes that they will apply a biblical definition to it vs taking an imperfect term from their language and hoping the imperfections won't hinder the message vs an assortment of other options is an important part of Bible translation!