Just a reminder to everyone to set your clock back one hour tonight. If you don’t then you will be an hour early for the worship gathering in the morning.
(Of course, if you show up early you can help set up………….hmmmmmmm)
See you an hour later tomorrow!!!!
I haven’t blogged in a while but something caught my attention today and I just had to bring it up. There’s a woman in Georgia that is petitioning the school council to remove the Harry Potter series from the school library because, as she says, they are "an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion." (You can read the article HERE) Basically the school council cut funding for Spanish language books in the library and some people thought that the action was prejudiced, so now it seems that other people are coming forward with their own agendas.
Ok. I really don’t want to get into a major discussion about Harry Potter, witchcraft, God’s view of witchcraft, and the such. For me those things are not the relevant part of this story. No matter what your beliefs are I believe that it would concern you that one or two people might have the capability to change things that would affect your family just because "they" have a certain agenda or belief. Let me explain it this way. Laura Mallory in GA doesn’t want Harry Potter in the library because SHE believes it supports and is recruiting children for wicca. I don’t . I have 3 girls in my house and most of them have read Harry Potter. They’ve seen the movies. They know about witchcraft. Am I concerned? Am I worried that they are going to start worshiping the devil? It could happen. The girls could feasibly decide to walk away from our beliefs and pursue something that I really consider to be dangerous and unhealthy. It happens all the time. Am I worried, though? No. Why not? Because we spend time with our kids. Because we know what they believe and what they don’t. We try to be involved in their lives so that we know who they are around and what they are doing. We have respect for them and, it seems, they do for us. I know what they believe about Harry Potter. It’s a good story. It’s a fun adventure. Is it a lifestyle or a direction to pursue? Not unless you actually believe that Hogwarts exists and that all of these characters are anything more than literature. We don’t believe that. The girls don’t believe that. They know it for what it is: fiction.
With that said I don’t actually see a reason that Laura’s influence should have any bearing on what my family sees as being "right". If she is coming from a Christian belief that it is "ungodly" then I actually have to disagree with her actions. I know most people would argue that to follow Christ you need to do as Christ did. They would then state that he drove out the moneychangers and did so because they were evil. That might be so, but I think we miss one huge point. He drove them out of the temple, out of His Father’s house. He didn’t drive them out of the street or the grocery store or even the school. It was the temple. It was a holy place. When he was out in the community he didn’t participate in the things that he saw as ungodly, but he didn’t force anyone to follow His way, either. If you followed and believed then you did it on your own, not because someone told you what to think or do.
I appreciate that Laura has convictions. I appreciate that she sees something in these stories that I don’t. That’s her right. I don’t believe that she has the right to tell me how my kids should be raised, though. I’m sure that I could look at her life and probably find some stuff that I think is pretty messed up and that she should get rid of. It’s not fair for me to state anything of her life. I don’t even know her. I can, though, say one thing: Just because YOUR kids might be susceptible to any influence doesn’t mean that MINE are. I hope that the reason that she is so concerned with Harry Potter has nothing to do not spending enough time with her kids to get to know them. My personal belief is that if you spend the time necessary with your children then most of this stuff won’t be an actual issue. You’ll actually know whether there’s a problem or not. Then you won’t have any time or need to police the rest of the world when you’re not even asked to.
I guess it could be said like this: If you don’t want your kids to read the books in the library, then send them to another school. Some of us actually like our kids to read and learn new things, even fictional stories about magic, faeries, and such.
I still like Peter Pan, to tell the truth.
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