Friday, September 7, 2007

Jonah was not an asparagus!

That is one of those things that I never imagined myself saying as a parent. This week in our Bible story book I have been reading to Peter and Kate about Jonah. This morning we were going over the main parts of the story and I said something about the ship's master waking Jonah up during the storm, telling him to pray to his God. Then Kate said, "no, something in his pillow woke him up." As it turns out, in the Veggie Tales movie, a worm in Jonah's pillow woke him up. So I had to remind Kate that Veggie Tales don't tell us exactly how things actually happened. We continued on with our review because we were planning to draw a picture timeline of the main events. A few minutes later, as we bagan to draw I was confused as to why Kate chose a bright green marker to draw Jonah. Then I noticed that her Jonah had a long narrow body. Suddenly it dawned on me! Her vision of the true events of the life of Jonah- and many others- is skewed by Veggie Tales! Why would I have ever thought that a young child should actually be able to determine the difference between the truth of scripture and a movie that mixes God's truth with talking vegetables! Do we ban Veggie Tales completely after allowing them for almost 6 years and receiving many of them as gifts? I wish I had thought this through before my children were able to become confused by them! On one hand, you may think they are creative, harmless, clean, character lessons. But do I really want my child to think that Jonah was an asparagus or Gideon was a tuba playing cucumber?!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Isn't it amazing that something can seem so harmless and then when the practical application of learning comes into place it can be very suspect!

Daddy

Karen Sue said...

Mom says "Let's cook them Veggietales"

Racine said...

Well, I'm glad that you had this realization so that I can learn from it with our family someday :-)

Moggy said...

I just love Vegetails. I was so careful to Not confuse my daughter with "Santa" "The Easter Bunny" and "The Tooth Fairy" and then just playing I told her other things not thinking she would take me serious.

I think you will be able to explain it as they grow. You might make up some characters of your own family, so they can understand how a story about real people could be told with vegetables or something like that.