Is She Kidding Me??

IS SHE KIDDING ME???

Last week I saw something that enraged me. Well, at first if enraged me. Then it just made me shake my head in disbelief. It seems that there is a woman in Georgia that is trying to get all of the Harry Potter books taken out of the Library because she says that it has “evil” references to Wicca and indoctrinates children into that religion. Now, if you stop there and just consider her point of view. You might buy it. But, I can’t stop there.

I gotta say here that if you are going to start to censure literature and start banning certain books, you better get a big trash can because there is a lot out there worth taking off the shelves. But for arguments sake let’s take this Wicca thing. I have to assume that this woman is a Christian. I hate working on assumptions, but this one is pretty clear. So this woman is a Christian, so then she has to know that she is accountable for instructing her children. “Train up a child in the way they should go and they will not depart” shouldn’t that be the bottom line here. We as parents need to be the driving force in our children’s ability to decide. We are put in charge of ensuring that they are taught the gospel, we are supposed to be teaching them the truth. From birth until the age of accountability and beyond by being an example. We as parents have to believe and have faith that our children will think for themselves and make decisions based on the standards that we have instilled in them. We cannot control the world around them to make it a safe holy place for them to live. That is unrealistic.

A friend of mine for arguments sake made the statement, “But don’t you think that having your kids exposed to these things desensitize them to things that we consider sinful?” Well, he had me there. Of course it does desensitize them. So does the evening news! I mean have you watched the evening news lately? **YIKES** It is a scary world that we live in. How about the public schools? We as parents cannot keep our children isolated. How will they be relevant to a dying world?

If we start to censure because some literature has references to magic, or witches or the dark side, or other religions, where does it stop? And why should it stop at literature? What about the music on the radio? Shows on TV? Movies? Where do we as believers draw the line? I know that each of us has our own convictions. But should we try to cut and paste them onto everything that we see around us? I don’t think so. Otherwise where would that leave us? If we remove Harry Potter (which by the way my kids have read and they own the movies) because of witchcraft, then we should also remove other things such as certain works of Shakespeare, poetry, books such as the Bible or the Qur’an because of it’s references to Islam or Christianity. We should also remove certain things done by Disney, like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Bed Knobs and Broom Sticks. We as Christians cannot be a part of censorship in America. We fought for freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom to pursue what we feel is the right. The truth begins at home and the accountability again lies on the shoulders of the parents to instruct and teach. The results lie in the promise that “they will not depart”. And that is one promise that I lean heavily upon.