-by Kathi
Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has a problem with libraries. Libraries?! The institution that has been around for centuries recording history and offering a place to expand your knowledge?
Referenced article – here.
Libraries don’t push children to read specific books. Sure they have displays and if you ask a librarian for suggestions you’ll get some. But just because a library hosts a book that you deem offensive doesn’t mean it’s a dangerous place. It’s simply a book sitting on a shelf made available to anyone who would like to read it.
If we’re going down this road, then any place that has books is a dangerous place for children. Amazon, the grocery store, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Goodwill, etc. Ham sends the wrong message with this outcry and I’m surprised he’s not calling for a ban on books.
Ham could have empowered parents to review books their children select, but instead he brings Satan into the message. This added layer of spiritual warfare makes the message come across as children being attacked when they really are not. All one needs to do is direct their feet to another bookshelf. It’s really not that difficult.
Spiritual Sounding Board 
I would imagine that any book that varies from his hardcore YEC/fundamentalist stance is considered a threat. Especially when you consider how little he values the thinking capacity of his followers.
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Any book Ken Ham wants to ban, or says I shouldn’t be reading, should probably be the next book on my reading list!
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God forbid that children should be encouraged to actually read. They might grow up to be critical thinkers.
Can’t have that now, can we Ken? 😉
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Reading is ‘Fun’damental, Ken!
(Also libraries have a bunch of super important things, like internet for people who can’t afford it. Back off).
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Read on another blog earlier – “He’s light on the ‘fun’ and heavy on the ‘mental’ . ..poor Ken.
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I was a “wide-read” child. Probably well-read, too. My parents were not Christians, but they did encourage my reading appetites. I can only once or twice remember my mom suggesting I wait on a book until I was a bit older. Anyway, one of the reasons I am a Christian today, almost 50 years from the day I first believed, is because I began exploring different belief systems. I found most of the books in my local library. I was reading a Bible on the side, met some other Christians, and received Christ in May of ’73. This was after reading up on Quakers, Buddhists, Hindus, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics…..after I became a Christian, I started reading church history and apologetics. Many of the books again came from my local library. I was in my first year of high school when all this was occurring (and very nerdy, too-I admit it!). But, the summary of the story–kids are all exposed to a variety of information all the time, even though parents don’t think it is occurring. I don’t know how often, as a teacher, I’ve met with parents to explain an issue going on with a student in the classroom, and they are shocked because the issue has never come up at home. We need to help kids be wise consumers of information and encourage them in good choices. At the same time, we need to admit that they may sometimes go outside our personal comfort zone for them, but that’s part of growing up. My parents, to my knowledge, never believed in Jesus. But, they did discuss what was happening with me, and were concerned that I might be joining a cult (I grew up in a West Coast City where Moonies and Hare Krishnas could be found on every corner). I knew what a cult was, and I explained what I believed and what we did at church. They were okay with it. and I continued reading my way through different flavors of theology, I eventually became a school teacher, missionary for 15 years and, church Bible teacher with women/children. I am still reading, up on current events and a passionate Christian. Ken H needs to teach kids how to think and choose, not how to run away and hide.
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Unfortunately, fear mongering is the go-to tool used by leaders like Ken Ham.
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This is just the next chapter of the “safe bubble for our Christian children” argument. The belief is that if we can shelter, indoctrinate and inoculate our children appropriately, we can save them. So, our kids can’t hang out with the neighborhood kids, our kids can’t go to public school, can’t go to a public university, can’t listen to radio, can’t read books unless they’re carefully selected.
What’s funny is that at one point, I read a book that was completely flawed. Because many of the books were filtered and approved, I didn’t develop the discernment necessary to filter out the bad thinking from the good.
The approach I’ve taken with my kids is to question – why would a person want to say that? Is it a good argument or a bad one? We don’t filter the books. I wouldn’t even know where to start in filtering out creation and evolution in science books, so I just try to be very careful to teach them to differentiate between science and religion – that is, saying that evolution is the best scientific explanation for … is science, but saying that evolution is true crosses the boundary into religion, because science is a set of ground rules for determining the most likely naturalistic explanation, and as such must rule out any religious explanation.
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Mark said,
This is just the next chapter of the “safe bubble for our Christian children” argument. The belief is that if we can shelter, indoctrinate and inoculate our children appropriately, we can save them. So, our kids can’t hang out with the neighborhood kids, our kids can’t go to public school, can’t go to a public university, can’t listen to radio, can’t read books unless they’re carefully selected.
— end quote —
Any Christians who think they can turn out moral children by sheltering them from the outside world and all its influences should watch a movie that came out called “The Village”
_The Village movie on IMDB site_
You can try to hide your kids away from sources you consider harmful, but it’s not a guarantee they will turn out okay, because people still have sin natures. People still have a propensity to do wrong, bad, evil – even if you prohibit them from watching TV, banning the internet / radio / streaming / rock music.
The “Village” movie makes that point quite strongly.
Sometimes, Christian parents who are too over-bearing and protective can actually drive their kid to do wrong.
There was a news story several years back about a Christian couple who were really strict with their teen son.
To the point they had their church pastor come over and search the boy’s room one day, where the pastor found and threw away the kid’s comic books, rock tapes, etc.
That was the breaking point for that kid – he could not stand being smothered by his uber Christian parents any more, and he set out to intentionally break all the Ten Commandments.
He ended up having sex with an animal, having sex with another man (though he was not homosexual – he did that just to spite his parents and their faith), etc.
He ended up committing suicide.
I think it may be better to allow your kids to access certain media but prior to that , explain to them what your values are. After they watch a certain show or movie or listen to a certain album, sit down and discuss it with them. Mention what you found troubling in the media, ask the kid for his/her views.
I think that’s probably a safer route than just out right banning certain songs / movies / books.
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Just found a couple of pre-coffee typos that needed editing. Perhaps if I had been writing it at the library where I could use reference books I would have not made the errors. 😉
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Off topic, but I think, of interest to most regular readers of this blog:
_MARY OR MARTHA?: A DUKE SCHOLAR’S RESEARCH FINDS MARY MAGDALENE DOWNPLAYED BY NEW TESTAMENT SCRIBES_ – from Duke Today site
Snippets:
– – – – start – – –
And why would these changes have been done?
I believe this was done to distort the Gospel of John’s presentation of Mary Magdalene.
If Lazarus’s sister Mary is Mary Magdalene, then she becomes a far more authoritative figure in the Gospel of John.
However, once Martha is added to this story, Lazarus’ sister Mary isn’t Mary Magdalene anymore – instead she’s a different Mary from a different gospel (Martha’s sister from Luke 10).
We know from other early Christian texts that Mary Magdalene was a controversial figure in earliest Christianity. I think somebody was trying to downplay her prominence.
The Gospel of John is a central text of Christianity, and I believe it intended to give Mary Magdalene a very prominent role. But she may have been just too much for the time.
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That’s fascinating. The Gospel of John was also written significantly after the other gospels, so it could be that John is trying to not only make a strong case for the deity of Christ, as is the scholarly viewpoint, but also trying to more strongly point against the patriarchy. It’s therefore not surprising that the patriarchal types of that day (just as today) would try to minimize and even alter the text to diminish the role of women.
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Well, well.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/06/26/former-creation-museum-staffer-exposes-toxic-culture-of-ken-hams-empire/
Anyone surprised?? (Je$u$ certainly $ell$)
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All I can say is “Hambone’s at it again”.
Some years ago during the World Cup, there was a joke “The next game in the series is Canada vs USA; loser gets Justin Bieber.”
Maybe we could make a similar wager with Australia re Hambone?
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Mark, the whole article / interview was interesting, so you may want to read the whole thing (if you haven’t done so already)
I only provided a small section of it here – I didn’t want to take too much of the other site’s work and/or annoy Julie Anne’s readers here with a huge honking excerpt.
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Regarding Carmen’s link
_Former Creation Museum Staffer Exposes “Toxic Culture” of Ken Ham’s Empire_
I’ve not yet read the whole thing.
For right now, I just wanted to say – re: the photo of the lady in the alien costume on the page – their alien costume looks like Plankton from the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon show
(_View Plaknton character images on Google Images_).
Also, Re: Sponge Bob and Christianity.
I know this older Christian lady who says her daughter in law and her son (both of whom are very devout Christians) will not allow their kids (all of whom are under age 9) watch SpongeBob cartoons.
I didn’t ask her why, because I am curious. When my mother was sick and dying (over a year and a half time), one of the few things that cheered me up at all during that time was watching SpongeBob on TV.
SpongeBob is a totally harmless cartoon.
I cannot imagine why any Christians would find it objectionable.
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I said,
“I didn’t ask her why, because I am curious”
I meant, “BUT I am curious,” not because.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask the lady why.
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I read the article before I commented. I would definitely like to understand how that affects the translation of passages like Mary at Jesus’s feet and Martha in the kitchen. I was fascinated about Bushnell’s research into how the Talmudic tradition crept it’s way into the NT translations, but this seems even more dark because there has always been an aura of “supernatural protection” when it comes to how the scribes dealt with the scriptures.
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This may be useful re: the article Daisy pointed out: http://thetextualmechanic.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-text-without-martha-implications-of.html – there is a counterargument that the paper author responds to.
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Or “Shlongo the Alien” from a Ken Ham rant cited over at God of Evolution blog on why there are No Aliens (God Saith). Said example alien (from Hambone’s original source) was a short green cartoon cyclops with one huge eye and no other facial features — with what looked like a giant green (circumcised) penis growing out of the back (or was it the side?) of its oversized ball-shaped head.
(As an old-school SF litfan, I know something or other about imaginative alien design, and that ain’t it.)
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Well, well Carmen,
Ham does indeed sound like Comrade Stalin (from the link you provided).
I wonder if he has his very own Beria too (in the AIG organization).
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How about this one:
Fund = Send Money
a = without
mental = brains
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Daisy, I have heard other people who didn’t like spongebob and I don’t totally remember why..they were rude maybe?
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@Daisy
Funny you mention that. I was reading Dorothy Sayers’ “The Man Born to be King” over Lent, and she made out Mary the sister of Martha to also be…(dun, dun DUN!)…Mary Magdalene. 🙂
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There was a time when James Dobson said Christians shouldn’t watch Spongebob because it promoted homosexuality. I used to let my kids watch Spongebob and I would laugh as much as they did. Sometimes I think religious people read too much into simple things.
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You could take any story in the Bible where men are close to one another and come to the same conclusion. I think some folks’ overreach is WAY over.
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“because science is a set of ground rules for determining the most likely naturalistic explanation, and as such must rule out any religious explanation.”
For me science is the pursuit of truth and can be used to determine whether or not there is a plausible naturalistic explanation for the beginning of life, the differentiation of life and the beginning of the universe plus many other questions. Science will not prove divine intervention, but it will not be able to rule it out. Since there is only one truth, science (the pursuit of truth) and religion will lead to the same answers.
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“Science will not prove divine intervention, but it will not be able to rule it out.”
Then I guess science will not prove extraterrestrial intervention, but it will not be able to rule it out either. Nor will it prove that there’s leprechauns, but it will not be able to rule it out either . . . See where this is going?
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Speaking purely for myself: No, I don’t.
Sorry, Carmen, but I don’t follow your reasoning. What do leprechauns or aliens have to do with theoretical divine intervention? How do you get from A to B? And where are you going with it?
(Note to JA and Kathi: Please let us know if this is getting too far off topic.)
P.S. Thank you for the link to the Patheos article. It was the first I’d heard about Hamm and AIG abusing employees, and it’s important to know.
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SKiJ – I have seen this line used repeatedly by believers and it’s nonsense. Just because you can’t rule something out doesn’t make it true. (the line was, “Science will not prove divine intervention, but it will not be able to rule it out.”) In other words, divine intervention may very well have happened IF one cannot rule it out. . .the same as the other two examples I’ve given.
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“I have seen this line used repeatedly by believers and it’s nonsense. Just because you can’t rule something out doesn’t make it true.”
If “science” cannot provide a plausible explanation for origins and differentiation of life, which in my and others opinion, they have not done, where do we turn. Most things do have a naturalistic explanation, but origins are not one of them. The pressure is on “science” to find naturalistic explanations. I do believe that they do feel the pressure and are doing their best to find said explanations as well as sell the world on their current paradigm.
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Someone said that Sponge Bob was a totally harmless cartoon.
Okay.
But I really didn’t like this scene and felt it was inappropriate for kids. Perhaps I’m a prude. But I didn’t appreciate being blindsided by this one. Then it made me wonder how may other little things were slipped into this harmless cartoon.
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I was expecting something much worse than I saw. I suppose your mileage may vary here.
But then, my parents didn’t want me watching the smurfs or scooby doc as a child which I thought was silly (I still watched them).
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Re: Mara and Mara’s Mr. Krabbs (from Spongebob) video.
Your video doesn’t change anything.
Spongbob is still a harmless cartoon.
The video you posted consists of a cartoon crab wearing pants rubbing a dollar bill on his groin.
This may be viewed as a slightly crude joke, but a lot of kids giggle at that sort of thing.
When I was a kid and my siblings were little kids, they were telling dead baby jokes, such as:
“What’s the difference between a truck full of dead babies and a truck filled with bowling bowls?”
Answer: “You can use a pitch fork to unload the dead babies.”
I can imagine an adult, fuddy- duddy and pearl clutching Christians tut-tutting over jokes like that,
but when you are a kid, even a kid growing up in a G-rated Christian home like I was, that stuff is considered normal or funny to some kids.
When my siblings were pre-teens, they liked to sing the _“The Diarrhea Song”_ on long car trips.
It wasn’t my cup of tea, but some kids are into that.
The video you posted:
It’s a cartoon crab wearing pants – there’s nothing sexual going on, and you cannot even see a cartoon penis.
If I had children, or was babysitting someone else’s, I would totally allow them to watch Spongebob.
I left the G-rated Christian Bubble years ago, the sort of bubble where Christians are overly sensitive to the dumbest things (such as Spongebob cartoons), and the longer I am away, the more bizarre Christian behavior and objections look to me.
I am glad I am not in that mindset anymore.
I’ve found that I cannot rely on G-rated, tut-tutting Christians who are upset over the dumbest things, because generally speaking, not only can they not handle mild Spongebob humor, but when I’ve tried to talk to them about the grief I was under-going after my Mother died, they were also the type to be insensitive, to spout off platitudes about “Just read the Bible” and “Turn it over to the Lord.’
They are the sorts who are among the types of Christians to victim blame me for going to them in grief seeking emotional support, shaming me, telling me I have “no right” to be sad about my mother (who I was close to) being dead, because that is “being self absorbed,” and the only people who “deserve” empathy are starving kids in Africa.
Usually, taking offense at harmless cartoons goes hand in hand with Christians being unwilling to be empathetic to hurting people.
Then you get your Christians who Tone Police and Language Police hurting people on blogs who use cuss words in the midst of describing the spiritual (or whatever sort of abuse) to tell them to clean up their language.
They will not try to hear the substance of the complaints, they only care about HOW the complaints are stated, and it has to be in Super Goody Two Shoes G-Rated Disney Language.
It makes me want to puke.
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DLC, ‘If “science” cannot provide a plausible explanation for origins and differentiation of life, which in my and others opinion, they have not done, where do we turn.’
We’re asking too much of science. Science is a set of ground rules for evaluating theories. Truth is philosophical, because to understand something as true, you need to evaluate it against your base presuppositions.
Science, for example, relies on induction – not mathematical induction, which is a form of proof, but induction in the sense that if I do X and Y results enough times, and without any counterexamples, then I can say that X causes Y. It is how we learn, in general, but it is not a proof. Even within science, things that have been proven/accepted as the truth were later disproven. Scientists saw that mechanical waves were carried through a medium (air/water/metal) and theorized that all waves must travel through a medium. This was demonstrated experimentally with all sorts of different waves, and since light acted as a wave, it was then demonstrated that there must be a medium that light travels through, called Aether. This was later disproven by a famous device, called the Michelson Interferometer.
Where Christianity and Naturalism (the two completing philosophies underpinning science) conflict is specifically the acceptance of the supernatural. Therefore, there will always be a conflict between philosophical Naturalists, who will misuse science as a proof against the supernatural, and Christians like Ham, who will misuse science as a proof of religion. I think that we have to understand that science will never be able to fully answer that question.
So, to answer your question, one’s philosophy or religion becomes the basis of that answer. There are base axioms from which each person evaluates the truth or falsehood of any claim. For example, some people claim Jesus never existed and argue that there is evidence that proves their case. Others claim they have evidence that proves that Jesus did exist. How do you evaluate that? You can’t put the evidence in a lab, run experiments on it and determine which is true. Instead, you have to weigh the claims, weigh the evidence, weigh the motives of the various people and determine what you think is true.
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Carmen, “Then I guess science will not prove extraterrestrial intervention, but it will not be able to rule it out either.”
Not true. We’re talking about supernatural vs. natural. Supernatural specifically means something outside of our natural world. Extraterrestrials or Leprechauns theoretically exist within nature, so, ETs, at least would be demonstrable scientifically. Leprechauns would be odd because they live within nature, but can do supernatural things (magic).
But, to answer your legitimate question, science DOES have its limits, but that is not evidence for or against the “God of the gaps” argument. Neither is it evidence for or against “Nature of the gaps” argument. There are those who argue that, because science has repeatedly shown supernatural arguments to be unnecessary that it will eventually eliminate any need for the supernatural. And… while that is a valid inductive argument, it does not satisfy the falsifiability arguments.
So I will say, that science’s inability to affirm or deny the supernatural is a result of the intentional design of science and not an argument for or against religion – ironically, very similar to what I said above.
Like Ham, I’m very intrigued by the intersection of the Christian worldview and science, but unlike Ham (or Dawkins, for that matter), I try not to make my views a fundamentalist litmus test.
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Here’s what it boils down to for me, Mark.
Science explains most things. Religion explains nothing.
Also, you have just illustrated that one must have FAITH where there is no evidence.
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All knowledge requires faith. Science is based on faith in uniformitarianism, which says that everything is governed by a set of unchanging laws. Whether or not you believe that there is something beyond what we can measure, you still act out of that faith.
Science cannot explain everything, since there is still no explanation for how matter and energy exist. They could not be always there because there are laws that say that energy cannot remain eternally useful, and they could not be created because there are laws that say that matter and energy cannot be created. Hawking was supposedly brilliant for eliminating the need for creation, but all he is saying is that our universe was “created” through an interaction with another universe. Even if that is true, it does not explain how the other universe came into being. So, the current scientific understanding says that our universe could not have been created, and it could not have existed forever, but that’s okay because science is a set of rules governing the acquiring of knowledge, not a philosophical system that must be internally self-consistent.
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“Mary Magdalene” simply means “Mary from Magdala.” Magdalene isn’t a surname. Magdala is a town on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. Its ruins are an extensive archaeological site, and the identification of the site is definitive.
Lazarus and his two sisters lived in Bethany, which is near Jerusalem, which is many miles from Galilee and several days’ journey on foot.. Mary the sister of Lazarus was most certainly NOT Mary Magdalene. I don’t know where or how somebody came up with that theory, but it is completely unsupported by the readily available facts.
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@STILLWIGGLING
Amen! Thank-you for those facts!
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Actually, Carmen, that’s not true. The kind of faith that Christians consider a virtue is the act of holding on to what our reason has once accepted, in spite of our changing feelings and circumstances. We don’t have faith in spite of evidence — it’s based on evidence. But it’s often the kind of evidence that non-believers tend to reject.
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As Mark Twain would say, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so”. 🙂
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As clever and pithy as Twain was, Carmen, he still didn’t know everything. Any more than Ken Ham knows everything, no matter how much he’d like to think so.
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A long time ago, I talked with a determinist, and I’ve been more and more realizing that the end game for the Naturalist worldview is deterministic. Determinism holds that state x+1 of the universe can be determined from state x and interactions with physical laws. That includes our thoughts, desires, actions. In other words, our actions have been predetermined from the moment of the Big Bang by unchangeable and inescapable interactions. This person believed that there was no good, no evil, because good and evil actions were not a choice, but a necessary result of the current state of the universe and the interactions of universal laws. This is the logical conclusion of the Naturalist’s version of the “god of the gaps” argument. If all “gaps” can be explainable through natural law, then there is no escape.
I think philosophically, that’s a much worse place than a God who is a spirit outside of the natural laws, and we are part spirit, outside the natural laws, and thus we are given free agency to choose to do good or do evil and modify the natural order.
As this determinist explained, the concept of good and evil presume an ability to choose. Where there is no choice, there can be no judgment, and this person argued that the penal system should be done away with because people who committed crimes were not “choosing” to commit crimes. I think Dawkins, for example, really struggled with the conclusions of his beliefs, and specifically with how to explain morality through the lens of determinism. He would say, for example, that we should “fight our genes”, yet he would also explain things like mothers throwing their newborn babies in dumpsters as some sort of pre-programmed evolutionary response.
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Three things I have absolute confidence in:
There is no naturalistic explanation of the beginning of the universe
There is no naturalistic explanation of the beginning of life
There is no naturalistic explanation for the differentiation of life.
The combination of science (the honest pursuit of truth) and God’s inspired word have led me to that conclusion. But honestly either one by themselves would lead me to the same conclusion.
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To come full circle, I think that’s why the ultra-left and the ultra-right (e.g. Ken Ham) want to control the inputs to our brains. They meet each other at school boards, censorship boards and book burning parties. I think Fundamentalists fall into a Deistic trap where, while there is a personal relationship with God, that relationship is governed not by grace and love, but by a set of mechanistic Biblical blessings/curses.
So, while I trust that God loves my children and shows them grace by helping them understand the truth and error in what they read, fundies like Ham believe that God is self-obligated to curse my children if I don’t micromanage their every step. Christian phonebooks, Christian book stores, Christian schools and the like arise out of this fear.
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Y’all continued to argue about the basis of faith or the existence of God…
Meanwhile, I was sort of hoping that lady would return to this thread to argue in defense of her pearl-clutching over the video of the Cartoon Crab (from the Sponge Bob cartoon show), when I pointed out my issues with her view.
As for the faith argument going on.
I don’t have both feet in one camp or another, but I can say that when I was a full-on Christian, my faith was not based on nothing-ness.
My faith was in / based upon the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
From there, a person can get into stuff like,
“Was Jesus of Nazareth an actual historical figure or was he invented” (some skeptics actually argue this).
And, are the biblical records and what they record about Jesus reliable. Stuff like that.
(Not limited to that, but that was part of it.)
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And to that thread… I’m somewhat on the fence. For example, I want sports to be a safe space for my children to explore competition, relationships, teamwork, responding to difficult coaches/players. I’ve had to talk to coaches about toxic players. One of my friends who coaches at a higher level said that he feels his Christian players are somewhat unable to compete because they tend to be hyper-sensitive to the nastiness that happens on the soccer field and then disenchanted when the referee doesn’t do anything about it. A result of life in the bubble.
So, on one side, there seems to be an argument that we should not try to sugar-coat and protect our children from the everyday worldly things they will encounter, and on the other side, there seems to be an argument against throwing our children to the wolves. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I want my children to have a happy upbringing, so I’m hesitant to not interfere when they have to deal with toxic kids, but I also don’t want them to be naive about what the world is like. I should probably watch some of the junk with them rather than comment about how nasty they’ve become to each other and us after watching certain shows.
My parents were overprotective in odd ways, and it led me to be too distrustful of others, which has made it very difficult to manage conflict at work and in church.
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Mark said,
My parents were overprotective in odd ways, and it led me to be too distrustful of others, which has made it very difficult to manage conflict at work and in church.
— end quote —
If you ever can, please see the movie “The Village”
You can read more about that movie here:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368447/
IMO, any parent who may be prone to being over-protective or any religious parent who is prone to being a pearl-clutching type who thinks the way to protect their kids or raise “godly” kids is to limit them from any and all bad stuff needs to watch that movie.
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Hopefully, not too off-topic, but I think that there is a balance. When my eldest was about five, I let the computer unlocked. We found her shaking in front of the computer watching a trailer for “The Dark Knight” on YouTube. Around the same age, we walked out of Ratatouillie because it was too intense for her. For this daughter, natural consequences seem to work best, but after multiple days of her being unable to go to school because her body couldn’t handle the lack of sleep from her being smartphone, we have to physically pry it from her hands so she can get enough sleep.
So, unfortunately, overprotective is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. When I was six or seven, I’d walk out of the house to play baseball with the neighborhood kids. We’re statistically safer as a society now, but today parents who allow their kids to do that get fined or arrested.
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Definitely watch the movie. It makes the very valid point that the problem is not within culture, rock music, dirty language, etc but in the hearts of men.
Jesus taught that sin comes from the heart, not from the food one puts into one’s mouth (per the Old Testament dietary rules).
The BIble teaches that your sin ultimately comes from inside you, not from rock music you listen to, or which movies you watch.
You can remove all “sinful” “worldly” rock music from a kid’s life, but that kid may still end up abusing drugs, skipping classes, or whatever. That was one big point that movie made.
Because my Christian mother struck the very right note – not too strict, not too lenient – I lived a clean life, but I was not tempted to the “forbidden” because I was exposed to “the forbidden” as a kid. My mother allowed me to watch secular shows, listen to secular rock, etc.
When I was a toddler, when I asked my father for a sip of his beer, he let me have a sip – so as a teen, I was not the least bit tempted to try beer, like my class mates, who’d come to school on Monday mornings bragging on how when their “old man” was away on the weekend, they snuck out some beer and drank it. Beer held no allure for me, since I had already tried it as a kid and felt it tasted like garbage.
Also, I read a true life story online a few years ago about a kid whose Christian parents were so super strict, they actually drove him to rejecting the Christian faith, and he intentionally – out of spite towards his parents and frustration – broke all the Ten Commandments.
Though he was hetero, he had sex with men. He had sex with an animal. He got into drugs. He later committed suicide not long after.
I read about how his Christian parents raised him, and it was too over-bearing, to the point they had a church pastor come to the boy’s room, go through his personal stuff, and the pastor threw away perfectly OK, normal stuff for a teen to have, like secular comic books and a few rock and roll music cassette tapes. That was after years of the parents severely limiting this kid, his life, his choices, etc. He finally snapped.
I cannot recommend that Village movie enough. All parents should watch it.
You can try to limit bad things around kids, but that isn’t what usually / always causes them to misbehave and sin.
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“Bart Simpson Syndrome” — When you’re 10 years old and male, ANYTHING gross and/or disgusting is hilarious. Especially when it freaks out the grown-ups.
IT’S A REAL SONG?
I remember it from my grade-school days in the First 1960s, except there we only sang (more accurately “rapped”) one verse at a time. Didn’t know it was a whole song.
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Man, you mention this a lot…meanwhile I saw that movie in the theater and hated it.
It has generally been my observation that kids that are overly restricted by parents are the ones who push hardest against it. I definitely think I would have. There is some sort of balance needed between protection and freedom.
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Then there’s:
Did you ever see a hearse go by,
You know some day you’re gonna die,
They wrap you in a bloody sheet,
And bury you down 20 feet deep.
The worms go in, the worms go out,
The worms play pinochle on your snout,
They eat your eyes, they eat your toes,
They eat the goodies right in your nose!
Don’t wish you had a spoon?
Yes I wish I had a spoon!
Thought it was the funnest song ever in grade 3. I learned it from my babysitter’s second grade son, circa 1966. He went to Catholic school, and had some really gross songs.
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It depends on the temperament of the child. My belief is that all the parenting authors have compliant children, and pretty much whatever parenting style they have “works” with compliant children. Because it worked and there are a few prooftexts, this is the “Biblical” way to raise children and if your children don’t turn out right, you’re doing something wrong. But a parent with a non-compliant child gets pushed to apply these techniques and that’s how kids end up in the hospital or dead.
There’s homeschool curriculum called the “Robinson Curriculum”. Robinson is a Ph.D. scientist who married a Ph.D, and she died when the children were young, so he created a curriculum, which was mostly teaching the kids to read and then letting them teach themselves. The children are all highly accomplished, so the curriculum must have done it… or maybe it was the fact that all of these children were exceptionally intelligent and self-motivated?
re: Josh Harris – I think he was one of those golden-child compliant children who was held up as an example to all, and when he was finally given a bit of space to ponder who he was, he probably had to go through the terrible two’s and the teenage years all at once.
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Lea – There is some sort of balance needed between protection and freedom.
I’m wary of books of any sort that tell you how to bring up children. You probably get more savvy advice from parents with older children you know and who are normal.
The best advice we ever read imo was to have three or at most four rules, and rigidly enforce them, such as getting to bed on time. Everything else relax, just let them get on with things, make a mess, louse things up etc etc. Don’t worry, be happy! Legalistic rules by the boatload don’t seem to work, nor such a hands-off approach that they can do what they like all the time.
Incidentally, I think Ken Ham has been misunderstood above. It’s not exposure to books of varying kinds that bothers him, its the so-called LGBT agenda being pushed on young children that bothers him. Rightly so.
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Mark, my mother told me she bought a book on raising the strong willed child, just for me lol! I’m kind of afraid to read it, it might be dobson.
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Yeah, Dobson, and part of the methodology was “breaking the will”. I guess if you start with a strong-willed child and then break the will, you have a compliant child. Later, though, I listened to a show where they interviewed adults who had been strong-willed children and they talked about how being strong-willed helped them as adults, so I think they’re talking with a forked tongue.
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“It’s not exposure to books of varying kinds that bothers him, its the so-called LGBT agenda being pushed on young children that bothers him.”
Pretty much everything is an agenda. I’d rather teach my kids how to ask why someone would say something than try to indoctrinate them on what they should believe.
Much of the LGBT “agenda” is wanting to be treated with respect and dignity, and yes, there is a lifestyle I disagree with, but I’m not going to deny a human respect and dignity because I disapprove of the lifestyle.
And, I’ll say, much of what I see in Evangelical Christianity is having a very narrow idea of an acceptable lifestyle, and ostracizing people who don’t walk that narrow road… The result is, not surprisingly, a church full of whitewashed tombs.
There is a flawed Evangelical belief that we can shame people to salvation. It’s repeated in songs… where people find Jesus in the depths, at the end of their rope, at the end of themselves… So Christians go around and shake their finger at every sinner thinking they’re that much closer to the end of their rope, and thus God. Not surprisingly, LGBT people find nothing but shame and judgment in church.
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Lea said,
Man, you mention this a lot…meanwhile I saw that movie in the theater and hated it.
It has generally been my observation that kids that are overly restricted by parents are the ones who push hardest against it. I definitely think I would have. There is some sort of balance needed between protection and freedom.
— end quote —
I only recommend it for the message.
I’m not a fan of the movie in and of itself per se.
Christian parents who think they’re going to produce “godly” kids by sheltering them form the influences of the outside world – not allowing them to watch Spongebob cartoons or listen to secular rock etc – are mistaken.
All the complementarian men out there need to watch the 1980s Sci-Fi movie “Cherry 2000”.
(The message from that movie: you may THINK you want a “submissive, compliant” girlfriend or wife, but you really do not.)
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Ken Ham’s next target may be Whole Food stores.
Whole Foods was planning on having a drag queen event at one of their stores or whatever.
_One Million Moms launches boycott of Whole Foods over Drag Queen Story Hour event_
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How we got to the diarrhea and dead body song, I’ll never know, but apparently talking about Ken Ham takes you places. LOL!
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Mark – I remember looking at the Robinson curriculum when I was homeschooling. It might have worked for my oldest because she is a voracious reader and has really good reading comprehension. My youngest would have struggled because he never really cared for reading and he struggled with reading comprehension. Turned out he had a slight reading challenge that we were able to find help for him to correct. If we would have tried the “one size fits all” approach to homeschooling he wouldn’t have thrived at all.
Lea – I think I may have read Dobson’s, “The Strong Willed Child.” I found nothing of value in that book. I think I also read his book on raising boys. Still no value. I think Christians believed Dobson could do no wrong, but there was plenty wrong in his books.
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It was supposed to be a reply to Headless Unicorn guy’s song, but I don’t think I pressed the right button. He and I share some of the same warped humor.
As for Ken Hamm, after teaching for so many years, I’m never surprised when I encounter sheltered Christian kids (no TV, video games, all activities with homeschool groups) who are up on all the latest whatever, Kids talk to each other, and they make sure they keep well-informed.
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The thing that killed Dobson for me was the preface to the “Strong Willed Child” when he describes beating his doxie dog into submission for sleeping on top of the toilet seat cover. I believe in dog-training, but I don’t believe in dog-beating. I don’t believe that children should be trained like dogs.
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Linn that is horrifying!!!
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HUG asked,
— start —
IT’S A REAL SONG?
I remember it from my grade-school days in the First 1960s, except there we only sang (more accurately “rapped”) one verse at a time. Didn’t know it was a whole song.
— end —
My brother and sister, who are older than I am, sang it on long car trips in the 1970s. Their version (what I remember of it) was not 100% identical to the one you hear in this video:
_The Diarrhea Song – on You Tube._
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Looking back at that (and Dobson’s radio excerpts from “The Strong Willed Child”), it’s obvious that Dobson approached relationships (with dog or child) as Power Struggle and ONLY Power Struggle.
“When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”
— Cersei Lannister
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I forgot I even had this on my blog:
From a web page about RTS – Religious Trauma Syndrome (which can include Christianity):
_Religious Trauma Syndrome and the (Negative) Effects of Religion on Mental Health_
–start snippet–
Delayed Development and Life Skills.
Many Christian parents seek to insulate their children from “worldly” influences. In the extreme, this can mean not only home schooling, but cutting off media, not allowing non-Christian friends, avoiding secular activities like plays or clubs, and spending time at church instead.
Children miss out on crucial information– science, culture, history, reproductive health and more. When they grow older and leave such a sheltered environment, adjusting to the secular world can be like immigrating to a new culture. One of the biggest areas of challenge is delayed social development.
—end snippet–
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