Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Taking God Seriously Message-ID: Date: 15 Nov 89 08:35:09 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 103 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes: >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. I'm not a great reader of fiction, but I believe that at least one of the names you list refers to some sort of wizard. I would suggest that you get a good concordance and look up all the Scriptures that refer to wizards, witchcraft, and the like. You have effectively stated that you will be content to let your children believe in things which God describes as being an abomination to Him. He also states that those who believe in such mystical entities ought to be punished by death to stop the spreading of these evil concepts. Do you feel that you know more about how you ought to raise your children than God Himself? >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 Scriptures do not teach the concept of permitting our children to be misled until they reach an age when we decide that they are old enough to understand the truth. You seem to have a lot of faith in the fact that your children will successfully transfer their faith to Christ as they get older. There are at least two problems with this statement. First, how do you know they will ever reach maturity? What if they die before then? Are you demonstrating the greatest possible love for those whose lives God has entrusted you with by knowingly permitting them to not have faith in Christ for any period of their lives? If your hope is that some time in the next several years they will develop true faith in Christ then God might just decide to teach you a very hard lesson by permitting their lives to be taken in a car accident, house fire, fatal childhood disease, or whatever, before then. A truly loving parent would be beseaching God on a continual basis for the salvation of his children. He would also, as an evidence of the sincerity of his pleas, be doing everything he can do develop that faith in his children. Part of this necessarily would involve the teaching of how to discern what ought not to be trusted. Proverbs 22:6 says "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.". What your children learn when they are young is what will have the greatest impact on them when they are older. By permitting them to exercise faith in the wrong things when they are young you are in a sense guaranteeing that it is those sorts of things which they will exercise faith in when they get older. The best age to teach a child those values which should become part of his subconscious nature is when he still implicitly trusts his parents' wisdom in all matters. This is more true the younger the child is. Children understand more than they are typically given credit for when they are very young. Many parents assume that their children really do not understand very much just because they have not yet developed the skills to speak sufficiently well to make that understanding obvious. Romans 10:17 says "So then faith {cometh} by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.". I actually believe that one of the best things a parent can do is read the Scriptures aloud to his child while that child is still within the womb of his mother, and then trust that God will open the spiritual ears of that child and perhaps even save him before he is born. With this approach a couple need not suffer any great anxiety if that pregnancy ends in a miscarriage because there would be a very great probability that God used that miscarriage as a way of calling home to Himself a very young child whom He had already saved. There are a number of Scriptures in which God specifically outlines His thoughts on idol worship. He declares that we ought not have faith in anyone/thing other than Himself because they cannot hear, see, smell, feel, or think. Note that Santa Claus, the easter bunny, or any ficticious character in a book, movie, or comic strip, definitely fall into this category. He then goes on to say that both those who invent such idols and those who believe in such idols are just as dead as the idols themselves. One such Scripture is Psalm 135:15-18 which says "The idols of the heathen {are} silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there {any} breath in their mouths. They that make them are like unto them: {so is} every one that trusteth in them.". Is this the sort of people you want your children to be? Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3 [The only one of that list that could be considered a wizard is Gandalf. However the way Tolkien envisioned a wizard is somewhat different from what I think you have in mind. His wizards were sent into the world by the One specifically to deal with evil. It is probably best to think of them as sages. They studied historical lore. Gandalf certainly did things that might be considered magical. But the impression you get is of a combination of use of laws of nature that are different than ours, and specific powers given to him by the One for use in fighting against the forces of evil. I know people who have claimed that some fantasy caused them spiritual problems, in the sense of tending to lead in the direction of the occult. I can see this for some of Charles Williams' work, but it seems less of an issue with Tolkien. --clh]