Keeping a clean soul in a Dirty World
You are what you and your family are consuming culturally
One of the greatest challenges to a person of faith is being in the world and not of the world. If you don’t know what this means, it is “church speak” for living in this world and not be influenced by it. The Bible is replete with warnings about the world and the sinful things of the world that we’re not supposed to partake.
Romans 12:2 ESV
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
1 John 2:15 ESV
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
The goal of every Christian should be the pursuit of holiness. The Hebrew word for holiness is transliterated as qodesh, and is used in the Torah to mean 'set-apartness' and 'separateness', as well as 'holiness' and 'sacredness'. Hence the challenge. We are in a world and cannot be apart from it physically. Unless we become isolationists like the people in the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Village, we must mingle with the world. As our culture becomes more decadent and more hostile to people of faith, the struggle becomes more real.
John 15:19 ESV
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
It’s even harder when you’re a parent and raising children. If we’re honest with ourselves, you know the world is coming for your (our) children. Adults are far less impressionable and malleable than a child. Children are a blank slate which is why we educate them early in life. Even the Bible speaks to this and the importance of impressing your faith upon your children.
Proverbs 22:6 ESV Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
The social currencies of our culture are very different today compared to my time. Our children are having a far wider range of discussions than I’d ever imagine. One area that particularly shocked me is in the arena of movies and television. Parents don’t seem to care anymore about what their children are consuming. When my middle child was still in elementary school she was asking about certain horror movies. I was really confused about how she came to the knowledge of said movies. Of course, the answer was her classmates at school had seen them. I am not just talking about what I refer to as the classics, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. She was asking about Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, It, Friday the 13th, etc. According to my child, her classmates’ parents had let them watch all these movies.
I don’t want to say that I had a sheltered childhood. My parents let me watch some things on television that I probably shouldn’t have. But back in my time, what was on television is very tame by modern standards. I was not allowed to watch horror movies. My parents wouldn’t take us to see these movies nor rent them. The only movies I was allowed to see in the theatre was Star Wars and Star Trek. If that is your definition of sheltered, then I guess I was in that sense. If I saw a horror movie, it was because I went to a friend’s house or stayed up late when everyone else went to bed and watched them on television with the volume down low. Even the music I listened to was more intense than the movies I watched by the standards of the time.
My wife and I haven’t sheltered our children but we’ve tried to protect their innocence and let them be children for as long as possible. I have always been very honest with our kids about things like life and death. If you asked my children what life lessons that I specifically have taught them they would probably say “everything you want in life costs money, and everything dies.” If you asked them what’s the number one point we tell them it would be “life isn’t fair”.
When my daughter confronted us about why she couldn’t watch those movies, my answer was “you can’t handle it.” I went on to explain my horror of the fact that her friends’ parents let them watch them and the fact she didn’t have (and her friends) didn’t have the mental ability to process what they or she could see. Being the persistent and stubborn child that she is she asked when she would be able to handle them. I simply said, “we’ll discuss it when you are a teenager.” Lo and behold, when she turned 13 years-old, she asks, “am I old enough now to watch horror movies?” Good grief, I thought. I didn’t realize when I employed my delay tactic that her generations social currencies haven’t changed.
I found myself in a conundrum that had several years earlier with my daughter about something very similar. When she was younger she wanted to buy the Monster High dolls when they first came out on the market. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are basically a Barbie Doll mixed with the themes of the classic aforementioned Universal Monsters. The biggies were Frankie Stein, Draculaura and Clawdeen Wolf to name a few. At the time I told her ‘No’, that I thought it was a little too Satanic for my taste for her to be playing with I said. At the time I was very zealous (probably more legalistic) in my faith and purging my home of all Satanic influence, or so I thought. She was young at the time and didn’t protest. But soon after I noticed something, having cut her off from this social currency I had inadvertently retarded her social growth. I see this quite a bit on home-schooled kids. She changed in ways I didn’t expect and by the time I finally relented I think the damage was done. She got on board after the trend was on its way out, but I vowed not to do that to her again within reason.
And here I was struggling with my role as a Godly parent, trying to be not of the world, and yet trying to raise a healthy and spiritual minded that was a functional member of society. I kept thinking about an old illustration one of my old co-Sunday school teachers made years ago. His son wanted to watch a movie that apparently had profanity in it, and the case was it was just a lit bit. He asked his son if he wanted some brownies that he just made to which he eagerly replied in the affirmative. He said to him, by the way he put a tablespoon of feces in the brownie mix, to which his son replied he didn’t want the brownies anymore. He asked his son why not, it was just a little bit.
As much as I loved this illustration and it failed on my child completely, I had a choice I had to make. As much as I would like to say that I kept my zealous fire and convictions, sometimes you just have to eat crap-brownies to prevent from doing worse damage. Life isn’t fair. My child was cut off from her friends and she wanted to be able to talk about the things they discussed.
I admit I was very angry with her friends’ parents about it because this was not a road I wanted her to go down in her personal interests at this age. Some people would say find your child better friends. Good luck with that. I would soon find out that even “church people” would allow their young kids to watch horror movies as well. You’re probably wondering what church I am attending, and the answer is your church. Ask around you will find out it’s the same everywhere unless you’re in a cult sect. But she was going down this path whether or not I wanted so I decided I was going with her. Unlike me, she would have a guide to navigate this labyrinth of cinema. So, I did what I knew best and would probably make the experience not as interesting. I made it educational.
I am a big movie buff as well and lover of movie props and practical special effects. I’m pretty well read on the backstories on the makings on some of the horror and sci-fi movie classics. Being that my professional career intersects with the movie industry on occasion, over the decades I’ve made friends with prop masters and industry people. I’d usually get the scoop on new stuff coming out long before the general public did, but not so much now in the age of the internet. I was well prepared to make this an educational experience. We started with the classics, the Universal Monsters, and then we moved on to the not so easy ones.
In essence, I became VidAngel and worked out a system of quickly notifying her when to close her eyes. During the process I would stop the movie and talk about a particular scene. In particular the original Friday the 13th in Kevin Bacon’s character’s death scene, I explained how he was really standing on a platform and how they had a fake upper torso and neck for the arrow to go through throat in real life. It definitely made the moment less intense for her by breaking the progress of the movie experience. Of course, I wasn’t letting her see this particular special effect but I told her what was going to happen. I particularly enjoyed sharing with her knowledge that in the original Alien movie that they were using real animal stomachs and bladders for the alien egg sack scene. I think she was generally interested in the learning about it all. I enjoyed sharing what I knew about it all too.
Being a father, I also took advantage of this moment to teach her about personal safety. All my daughters are beautiful and when they are grown up, they are going to be gorgeous. I’ve made a point to them all that they do live in a world of monsters, and people are those monsters. Every time one of those ditzy female characters wonders into a scene and gets slaughtered, my daughter says right before it happens, “stupid girl, don’t investigate!” Most of what we see in movies are imaginary monsters but in the cases of ones like Halloween or any movie with a real-life psychopathic killer, they were great opportunities discuss self defense and escape tactics. I loved to pause the movie and ask, “what did she do wrong in that situation?” Some of her answers were very reassuring that she would have not found herself in that situation in the first place. There are some movies I still refuse to let her watch because they are still too intense for her in the story or the gore factor. Some are beyond the scope of what I would consider actual cinematic storytelling and are just murder porn or better packaged snuff films.
You may be scoffing at this point and saying why should I worry about it since everything in movies are fake anyways. Of course, everything that happens in movies is fake but nonetheless you can’t deny that all these things have an impact on you, even as an adult. I don’t have a potty mouth typically. Occasionally, I will let things slip if I hit my fingers with a hammer or something similar. I have noticed that if I watch a show or a movie with lots of profanity that it inadvertently worsens those reflex moments when I let a curse slip. That filth creeps into your subconscious without you even knowing. But it goes even deeper then that.
Growing up on a farm, I have seen some horrible stuff, blood and guts literally as a child and as a teenager in both man and animal alike. I will spare you the specific details. Even having experienced all that in real life, nothing prepared me as a teenager to process the triple decapitation of paintball players in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. I had seen a decapitation before on television on the series Shogun but this was quite different. Even 30+ years later when someone mentions decapitation, the first thing that comes into my mind is that scene. I am still processing that specific scene in my brain. I can’t unsee what I saw. It’s a mental stain that can’t be erased. Again, this why the Bible warns us about what we put into ourselves.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
We want to our children to consume good and wholesome foods so why not the same as far as entertainment; music, movies, television and internet content. If you aren’t feeding your children poo-brownies then why are you letting them ingest poo-entertainment. But let’s face it, your kids are going to want to eat junk food. Its in our nature, our sin nature, if you are of the Christian faith. As a parent, you will have a choice. You will either walk it out with them, as I am choosing to do so and censoring where I can, or they will do it alone uncensored and unguided.
At least if you go with them down that road, you can ask the big questions after watching it with them. Did you learn anything from this? Did it make you a better person? Did it draw you closer to God? If you find out the question is no, then you can ask why you are watching it. You will find out most of the time it’s the same answer I get, “all my friends are talking about it and I’m the only one who hasn’t seen it.”
Even my youngest is going down a different yet similar horror rabbit hole with the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s or FNAF (fi-naff phonetically). If you aren’t aware of this game and genre, its about animatronic animals at a pizza place that come to life and attack children. In the first game, you are a night watchman trying not to get killed with the characters come to life. Now the most you see are jump scares but its still quite dark and intense. There tons of music videos based on the game on YouTube that have quite catchy songs. There are several video games which spun off into books, graphic novels, and merchandise sales. It has its own lore. Just go down the toy aisle at your local Walmart and you will find it. There was even a terrible knock-off movie made called Willie’s Wonderland staring Nicholas Cage in which he had no lines whatsoever. The targeting of our children just gets younger and younger.
Sadly, Christian culture hasn’t offered them any alternatives either in the movie category. At least with music there are lots of alternatives but movies hardly any of good quality. Christians are still pouring millions of dollars into Disney and they’re still generating content contrary to God’s values targeted at your children. Let be honest – the Bible is full of plenty horrific stuff that Christian horror movies could be produced if you really want to go there. At least we know there would be something of value to learned from those movies.
Perhaps my generation ate too many poo-brownies and we’re so reprobate now God can’t change us. Or we’ve failed our kids like our parents did by sticking us in front of the television like a babysitter to answer all our life’s questions. I am not saying with 100% certainty that I am doing the right thing but its best thing I know to do now.
Perhaps I am failing my kids by not sticking to guns. You must decide what’s best for your kid and me what’s best for mine. Even Dr. Tony Evans used the horror movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose which was based on a true story as a sermon illustration point about the use of antidepressants as a substitute for dealing with your problems in a biblical manner. I am just trying to do the same. I am trying to find value in the content and time that I am spending with my children on this journey. I could be dead wrong about all this, but its just my perspective from the bottom end.
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