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On a recent episode of Friday Night Lights, there were some elements that bring up an interesting discussion about children, Christianity and television.
From The Conservative Mindcleaner’s article, Losing Her Religion on Friday Night:
[T]he soap opera aspect in this week’s episode had the promise of being interesting. Julie, the coach’s daughter, and the coach’s wife were coming out of church as the daughter remarks on how hypocritical everyone is about a situation involving a player being sent to another school. She basically indicates that if she didn’t have to go to church, she wouldn’t.
Now, I’ve seen this scenario play out on TV and in real life and I’ve never heard a parent or minister make the obvious point to the would be apostate: READ YOUR BIBLE! As even Homer Simpson once observed, “EVERYONE’S A SINNER…except this guy.” The mom in FNL did point out that you don’t have to go to church to find hypocrites, but she ends the whole thing later in the episode by explaining that going to church for her was about family.
How is it that someone who claims to go to church and be a Christian would not know that church is about more than family—it’s about Jesus.
Now, I can see someone saying that they continue to go even though they do not believe themselves because of their family—that would make sense. But I would hope that these same people would be intellectually honest enough to know that church is not about family—it’s about God.
Yes, going to church is in a small way about family. But the [Christian] faith isn’t a self-help program. It isn’t family therapy. It’s about salvation. That’s how a parent, fictional or otherwise, has to put it if they want their children to understand why they get up and go on Sundays. If little Julie doesn’t want to go to church, tough. When she’s out on her own, let her do whatever. However, if the parent has no better reason to go than it’s a family outing, then it’s their own stupidity they should be concerned with and not the child’s.
Exactly.
