Earmuffs, part 2.

A timely bit of satire from the InternetMonk. 

Group Seeks Genesis Ban

Earmuffs

Earmuffs are objects designed to cover a person's ears for protection.  Unfortunately, kids don't come with them and unless you've trained your kid to cover his ears on command as Beanie did in "Old School", the daunting task of earmuffing is mostly left to us parents.  Sometime in the middle of the preaching portion of Sunday's service, I was gently reminded of this.  While intently listening to the preaching (of course), I happened to look down over the shoulder of my oldest son as he read this day's entry (already multi-tasking his spiritual life) in a devotional book distributed to the kids in our church.  To be honest, although we've probably had copies of these devotionals hanging around the house and the clutter of the family van for some time, I hadn't yet made an effort to look over the material.  The topic was convictions and I was immediately convicted ... of my lazy parenting.   He finished at the end of the single-page devotional, but I didn't.  As I quickly scanned the next couple of entries, I was reminded of my ongoing failure to filter and add context to the things my kids read and hear.  Over the next years, my kids will be bombarded with dogma and philosophies streaming from both malicious and well intentioned influences, and I need to be in all of it.  Earmuffing offers some protection, but the noise is only dampened.  Retreating to pockets of protection where we can isolate our children from the world certainly offers the perception of protection, but like earmuffs, is only moderately effective.  Scarey to think about really.  Passive parenting in this case is failure.  But with these infiltrations of religiosity and absurdity come wonderful opportunities to teach the real Jesus.  That's my job.  Not the school's, not the church's (although I certainly hope in most cases to find a certain amount of alignment here), and it's most definitely not the job of a silly little devotional book.

"Earmuffs!"  I wish it was that easy.

Any experiences of filtering you'd like to share?