Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Taking God Seriously Message-ID: Date: 10 Nov 89 07:33:59 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services Lines: 35 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) writes: >Second, there is something very wrong with both Santa Claus and the >Easter bunny. They are not real. God has commanded us not to lie. >[...] Any of us who even have the slightest desire to have our >children believe in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, or any other >ficticious character for that matter, is engaging in serious sin by >the very area of their source of fulfillment for their lives. We ought >to be spending all that wasted time and effort teaching them about God, > Come, sir, this is a bit much. Am I to infer that "Pilgrim's Progress" is a tool of Satan because its protagonist never *really* lived? Fiction (or, more specifically, the ability to imagine counterfactual situations) is exactly like every other gift from God, in that it can be abused. No one denies that. But to single out this practice as uniquely evil is absurd. Were Our Lord's parables *evil* because they never really happened? Does the trustworthiness of Christ depend on whether, in actual historical fact, "A certain man had two sons..."? I personally will be quite content to let my children (if ever I have any) believe in the existence of Aslan, Gandalf, Ransom, The People (Praised be the Power and the Presence and the Name!), and a host of other valuable *fictional* role-models and allegories. Your point about setting up Santa as the "source of gifts and judge of character" is somewhat more appropriate. Nonetheless, I think it would take a particularly stupid and unimaginative child to fail to transfer the attributes of Santa to the proper Person as maturity comes, given early exposure to the Word. "The Thinker" (He *looks* smart, but what does he *do*?)