Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Children Can Hear Without Cartoons!

Throw away all the electronic toys in Favor of personal attention!           

On another post today there was a joke about the songs on children's videos, it was funny how those songs can stick in your head even when you have become tired of them.

The thought has come to me many times about using cartoons and children's songs to entice children to love God. I questioned it for some time, something didn't seem right about it. So I prayed, asking the Lord why I was uncomfortable with these "Veggie Tales" and other cartoons designed to bring Christians principles and teach the love of God.

Here is what God gave me to demonstrate exactly what was going on:

How seriously can we take the gospel when it comes from a talking tomato? We are telling a lie, (that tomatoes talk), to tell the truth of the gospel. Making the gospel just another cartoon like all the other cartoons, all the Bible patriarchs become just more of the same cartoon characters.

I gave one of those videos to our grandchildren once, thinking it would be fun for them and still have a Christian theme.  Later I asked my daughter to throw it away because God was showing me something about them that had not occurred to me before.

So often we attempt to bring God’s truth our own way, thinking it will cause delight in the people receiving it and therefore they will like God.

When our motivation is to please people with the gospel, we have lost the battle.  Christ never used popular means of bringing His principles. He spoke plain truth and lived it, that was the way Christ told us to spread the Good News.

John 8:31-32
The Truth Will Make You Free
"31 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

The Bible accounts of history are exciting enough without having to use untruths to entice the hearer, even children can be excited about them. 

Personally I like the flannel graphs that show people rather than talking animals and vegetables.  I have never met a child that didn't like the flannel graphs.  They watch intently as the stories unfold and the pieces go up that depict the Bible truths.

Perhaps all of you could name other things you have seen that fall into the category of enticements concocted by man to bring the principles of Christ or the gospel, thinking that man can do a better job than God already did in His Word.

I do not judge the heart of those who use these things, but I do think if we prayed more before indulging in cultural enticements we might find, as I did, that we don't need them, we have the Bible and we have our mouths. 

If we could just keep the children away from all the electronic toys long enough to be content with a story told to them on the front porch in the summer time, I think we would be able to have their attention. 

Just some thoughts to pray about.

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