Veggie Tales Theology, and Taking All the Sex and Violence Out of the Bible

The Epoch Times reports North Dakota has decided to allow Bill Gates’s $13.5 million farmland purchase near that state’s border with Canada and Minnesota, over and against objections from many locals, so long as the land will still be leased out to those who want to put it to productive use. That caveat is a good one, but I can't help wondering what the Microsoft founder and promoter of vaccines and synthetic meat is up to.

In other news, Merriam-Webster.com has a piece of work up titled ‘Pride’: The Word That Went From Vice to Strength in which they assume our ancestors were all mistaken, especially about how it goeth before a certain other unpleasant thing, but we are quite correct today in celebrating pride, especially where our other sins are concerned. He who defines the terms in a debate will win it, apparently.

But this reminds me of a story I once heard about a man driving down the interstate. Oncoming traffic honking and swerving out of his way, flashing headlights at him, his wife calls him on his cell phone after recognizing their vehicle in the live helicopter footage broadcasted on TV. He tells her it’s not just one man going the wrong way, it’s everyone!

Meanwhile, The Daily Wire ran an article yesterday titled ‘Hillsdale College President Under Fire After Ripping State Of Public Education.’ In a shocking turn, educrats and their adherents are offended by accurate criticism of their efforts and ambitions. Who could have imagined?

On a related note, I ran across a funny snapshotted headline last night by a certain H. Ulman with the Associated Press. ‘Amphibious pitcher makes debut.’ The word they were looking for was “ambidextrous,” but maybe Merriam-Webster will redefine “Amphibious” to spare the AP and our public education system the embarrassment moving forward, convincing us all that our ancestors wrongly defined these terms and amphibious is quite correct if you look at it from the right angle, or from the left.

All this leads to a larger point I’d like to make in this episode about how the Bible is both a very manly book about God and a very godly book about man. Despite what you may have learned from Veggie Tales, there is in fact both sex and violence aplenty in God’s Word. And from Genesis to Revelation, there is not one instance of a talking tomato or asparagus. But there are stories of murder and war, plus a whole book dedicated to the intimate relationship of a man and his bride.

And really, now. How are Christian adults supposed to think, feel, or talk about sex and violence in broader society when we so often skip over what the Bible actually says about sex and violence when teaching the Bible to our children? It's like expecting us to know how to talk about pride while only letting Merriam-Webster define the subject instead of reading Proverbs to frame our understanding. 'That dog don't hunt,' as they say in some rural areas where dogs and hunting go together like two peas in a pod.

But back to pride. I seem to remember now that we are warned about it in the Biblical text. And the warning we are given about it has a lot to do with it not being a strength at all, but actually being the requisite heart condition which God promises to oppose.

"Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall."

But if some godless critic points out at this juncture that there is a certain vanity inherent to censoring the Scriptures we share with our kids, they are right. And naivete is not the same thing as innocence, by the way. And ignorance is not bliss when we consider that to ignore a thing is not at all the same thing as that thing ceasing to exist.

To be sure, we can ignore a great deal that is consequential if we choose to. But this is where another word bears defining - 'Ignorant.' And a related word goes along with that one - 'Foolish.' And by this I mean that those who make a habit of ignoring the whole counsel of God are defined by what they habitually do, whatever Merriam-Webster says.

Folly is not presented in the Scriptures as a thing to be merely ignored, overlooked, or wish-casted into a profitable outcome. And it is certainly not a thing to emulate anymore than it is a thing to affirm even with silent acquiescence. Rather, folly when encountered - in ourselves, our households, or our nation - ought to be corrected and contradicted with wisdom, just as wickedness ought to be called to repentance and a turning toward righteousness instead.

We have to read the portions of Scripture - even, yes, to our children - which pertain to sex and violence if our children are going to be trained up to not depart from Biblical attitudes and orientations in relation to the same. If we do that, we will know what to make of Gates, dictionaries, public schools, amphibious pitchers, and pride, and many other things besides.

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