After my previous post on “The Golden Compass”, dedicated reader, excellent blogger, and all-around swell Hindu, Ghosty, published a related post on the dogmatic extremes involved and I highly recommend you read it.

Clicky clicky.

I’ve touched on this in several previous posts, but I want to dedicate some time the subject. I get lots of emails from “religious groups” like the AFA, the RFC, et. al., and I’m grateful for the work these folks do. It’s a great way to stay on top of political and cultural battlegrounds. But I don’t charge angrily into the fray every time I get an “alert” email. Quite frankly, there are battles I choose not to fight.

As Ghosty said in his post, the Bible is rife with passages challenging you to think. Use your head. You can’t believe what you know until you know what you believe. I believe the strength of Christianity is the fact that it teaches its followers to challenge authority. “Don’t take my word for it, look it up!”

I remember seeing a clip on the news back during the Branch Davidian hubub. (Remember Waco?) In it, David Koresh is preaching from the Bible and not one of his followers has a Bible of their own. Get it?

You’d be amazed at how many people don’t carry a Bible to church. They just assume that the guy in the pulpit knows everything and they trust everything he says… blindly. I love my pastor, I really do, but I’m not putting my eternal soul in his hands. My faith is in Christ, not Dennis, and not the AFA or the RFC.

This goes beyond “The Golden Compass”. In the last month, I’ve received at least five or six emails from the AFA decrying various retailers for not including “Christmas” in their marketing. Really? That’s worth taking up arms? Does it somehow damage our culture when secular retailers act like secular retailers rather than Christian ones? I don’t think so.

This is from an email my dad sent me last week, a letter from God:

It has come to my attention that many you are upset that folks are taking My name out of the season. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I wasn’t actually born during this time of the year and that it was some of your predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on what was actually a pagan festival. Although I do appreciate being remembered anytime.

I don’t care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My birth, just get along and love one another.

If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it:

• Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home.
• Instead of writing to the President complaining about the wording on the cards his staff sent out this year, why don’t you write and tell him that you’ll be praying for him and his family this year. Then follow up.
• Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a kind word. Even if they aren’t allowed to wish you a “Merry Christmas” that doesn’t keep you from wishing them one.
• If it bothers you that the town in which you live doesn’t allow a scene depicting My birth on the lawn of City Hall, then just put a Nativity scene on your own front lawn. If all My followers did that there wouldn’t be any need for such a scene on the town square because there would be so many of them all around town.
• Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a Christian. Let people know by your actions that you are one of mine.

Don’t forget; I am God and can take care of Myself. Just love Me and do what I have told you to do. I’ll take care of all the rest.

Good stuff.

Lest you take this to mean otherwise, I do still believe that there are some causes worth fighting for and some cultural movements that are dangerous, especially to our kids. On those, I have looked it up and I am willing to fight.

One frequent argument by those who favor freedom of everything is to say, “If you don’t like it then don’t buy/watch it.” While that is true of the individual, I can tell you that no parent is capable of sheltering their kids from anything that is popular with their peers. Not unless they lock the kids in a broom closet their whole lives (which, apparently, law enforcement frowns upon, those pansies).

Yes, you can refuse to take your kids to see a movie, but their friends at school (even a “Christian” school) may see it, and love it, and quote lines from it, and buy merchandise promoting it. Eventually, your kid will see the movie whether it’s at the mall, on DVD at someone else’s house, or even on their friend’s iPod. It’s not out of spite (usually). It’s just so they can feel a part of the craze.

The two biggest faults I see in parenting today are 1) assuming your kids are naive to the world and 2) assuming your kids are completely honest with you. Were you completely honest with your parents? (I was of course. *wink* Hi, mom!)

I agree with Ghosty’s point that exposure to dissent is good, but I would say that there must still be reasonable limits. It’s good to have your faith challenged so that you will learn to defend it. But it’s not good to be exposed to any evil just to make sure you know it’s wrong. Some evil can be correctly judged from a distance. I don’t have to pick up a red hot piece of metal to know that it will burn me and I don’t have to watch every movie Hollywood puts out to know when one is not fit for my consumption.

That’s all I’m tryin’ to say.