Safe

Yesterday in church, a missionary called all the kids up front and then proceeded to ask, in front of everyone, what they wanted to be when they grew up.  There were the usual doctors, astronauts, and so forth, but my toddler insisted he wanted to be 'a star wars movie.'  Cue the good natured laughter at the antics of adorable children, but when the anecdote was related to my in-laws, instead of laughing, they were horrified and asked aghast, "you let him watch THAT?!"  Which really made me scratch my head, what was so bad about Star Wars (the original trilogy)?  We haven't sat down and watched it as a family, he is a little young yet, but we watched it with friends while the kids were in and out playing, watching a snippet here or there and I saw nothing wrong with that.  But then, we've received numerous animated DVDs from them of late, none of them are bad but none of them are good: they are downright boring, having been stripped of everything that gives life depth, zest, mystery, color, and interest.  While they may be 'safe,' any child with half a brain would be insulted that you thought they would find such insipid drivel interesting.

Which sent me back to my own childhood, which was stripped of all joy, peace, hope, and fun, and I certainly wasn't allowed to have my own personality, tastes, and interests.  Anything I loved was taken from me or used against me and I ever lived in fear of offending my mother, who would then threaten to turn me out in the street and demand to know why I was so stupid and couldn't do anything right.  It was only years later that I learned that life wasn't horrible, hopeless, and dull.  While my in-laws mean well, wanting to 'protect' their only grandchild from the horrors of the world, in a way they are doing something very similar to what happened to me in an abusive home: distorting the world into a shape not its own.  My mother stripped it of all joy and wonder.  They want to remove any danger, risk, and darkness.  But what is a person to do when they must actually go out and confront a world they do not recognize?  I found it more wondrous than I could ever dream.  If raised as they would have him, my son would find it an intimidating place indeed.

I found the comparison and contrast quite interesting, especially considering the season: the days leading up to Good Friday and Easter.  Especially when my in-laws profess to be Christians.  The very center of their beliefs is the gruesome death of an innocent man, nay God, on a 'hill far away.'  Should I protect my son from THAT as well?  We have many 'children's Bibles' in our home, most gifts from various friends or relations, but there is really only one we have really read and focused on and that tells the story of the crucifixion, it is certainly no Passion of the Christ, but it does not leave out that rather disturbing detail, which is the very center of the faith, as many of the others do.  There are several that have nice pictures and charming little stories, but they end with Jesus holding the children on his lap and smiling.  Just a nice man and a nice, clean, safe story.  No death, no messiness, no resurrection, no hope.

There is a rather famous line in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which goes, "“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver,“who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good."  The other day my son, right before getting in trouble, said, "mommy a nice mommy," I could only smile and say, "no, I'm not a nice mommy, I'm a good mommy," I was very much reminded of the above quote, and knowing he was trying to get out of the consequences of his actions, but being 'good' rather than 'nice,' I knew it was for his good that he face the music.  We all want the world to be safe or nice rather than good, we also want the same of our god.

There has been some trumpeting of the theoretically dying Church in America, how people are fleeing 'the faith' and sensibly embracing the secular materialism of our day.  The problem with that assertion is that those 'fleeing' the faith, really were never a part of it to begin with.  Yes the mainline, liberal leaning denominations are shedding adherents like a cat hair, but that has been happening for decades, it is only with the cultural revulsion of the word 'Christian' that 'christians in name only' are finally doffing the offensive title to maintain their hipness and cultural acceptability.  There is no crisis in the orthodox churches, they've been 'offensive' for the last two millennia.  Who else can say they were offending the Romans 1500 years before we even discovered there was such a thing as the Americas?

But those denominations, like the insipid children's Bibles and the insular worldview of my in-laws, are all about being nice and safe and acceptable and inoffensive, but that isn't life and it certainly isn't faith in Christ.  I love Star Wars, it is perhaps the most human movie ever, portraying courage, risk, struggle, good, evil, an openness to the supernatural and mysterious, friendship, love, betrayal, adventure, peace, war, hate, beauty, ugliness, greed, cowardice, sacrifice, redemption, humor, tears, and all the weird, wild, and wonderful traits that make this world so tragic and so beautiful.  I want my son to grow up understanding that, I don't want to water down the world, or the faith, to 'protect' him.  I can't and I won't, it does him a huge disservice.  I want him to grow up understanding and appreciating this world, this story of which he is a part, and to know that he can not only survive but can also thrive, he can face the darkness and know that the light has overcome it.

The Apostle Paul sums it up well, "and if Christ has not been raised [from the dead], your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." It is a complex, strange world and the only answer must be as strange, as offensive, as unsafe, un-nice, and un-pretty as the darkest sin.  Pretending it isn't there doesn't make it go away.  Sanitizing the story only insults people, as those boring, 'safe' cartoons offend the very children they were made to entertain.  The world is what it is, the story is what it is, don't make it nice, accept it or don't, but it is a grievous insult to all our intellects to pretend that it is only safe, when it is actually good.