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My wife and I like books and movies, and as our children have grown up, we’ve enjoyed introducing them to our favorites.
We’ve raised them on regular doses of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other contemporary authors, as well as lives of the saints, Bible stories, and classics of children’s literature. We’ve shared our enthusiasm for various movies (being a runner, I’m a great fan of Chariots of Fire).
In our experience, reading and viewing together are far more than fun family activities. Exposing children to the works of writers, producers, and directors who use their talents to entertain and upbuild can support parents’ efforts to teach sound morals and a love of excellence. By providing a basis for comparison, it can also have the “inoculating” effect of helping kids to develop discernment about movies and books that fall short.
But we, too, need discernment for navigating the minefield of today’s media offerings. Without it, we risk becoming permissive parents who let…
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Hi Dr. Schreck! Thanks so much to you & WAU for this article! We really need such balanced guidance especially in confusing times like these. With all the darkness out there it can get easy to get too legalistic in our genuine desire to avoid it for ourselves or children and we can sometimes “throw the baby out with the bath water”. We Christians are called to be light in the darkness, and i think our beloved JPII really showed us how to find rays of light even in the darkest of circumstances and hold up those rays, focus on them, so that in the midst of the confusion, sin & darkness, the world can be drawn to the good things within our culture and circumstances, and we can help facilitate those good things to be places/moments/opportunities for people to encounter God, from Whom all good things come. Otherwise, to totally avoid the increasing darkness out there, we’d have to hide our own light under a bushel basket. These are just my thoughts - I’d love to hear some more feedback from you on this! :-)
I was in your Theology of the Church class at Steubie-U in 1990 I think. God bless you!
~Margarita Szechenyi