Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Veggie Tales: “Morality, not Christianity”
Found a fascinating article on Facebook. It is about Veggie tales creator Phil Vischer from 2011. He says some fascinating things about the whole Christian morality that we teach children. So often without having Jesus/Christianity Centrally in the story.
I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, ‘Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,’ or, ‘Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!’ But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality. American Christian[s]… are drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore.
Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god… We’ve completely taken this Disney notion of ‘when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true’ and melded that with faith and come up with something completely different.
There’s something wrong in a culture that preaches nothing is more sacred than your dream. I mean, we walk away from marriages to follow our dreams. We abandon children to follow our dreams. We hurt people in the name of our dreams, which as a Christian is just preposterous. ["It's Not About the Dream," WORLD magazine, Sep 24, 2011, 57-58]
Have a read here
I guess in my role as chaplain it is a massive trap which I have fallen into and am looking to find that balance. How about you. I'd love to hear about your traps and more importantly how you overcome them.
I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, ‘Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,’ or, ‘Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!’ But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality. American Christian[s]… are drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore.
Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god… We’ve completely taken this Disney notion of ‘when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true’ and melded that with faith and come up with something completely different.
There’s something wrong in a culture that preaches nothing is more sacred than your dream. I mean, we walk away from marriages to follow our dreams. We abandon children to follow our dreams. We hurt people in the name of our dreams, which as a Christian is just preposterous. ["It's Not About the Dream," WORLD magazine, Sep 24, 2011, 57-58]
Have a read here
I guess in my role as chaplain it is a massive trap which I have fallen into and am looking to find that balance. How about you. I'd love to hear about your traps and more importantly how you overcome them.
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