We've always loved Veggie Tales in this house. Wholesome, silly, a little bit clever, and always a hit with the kids. Silly Songs With Larry are some of the best children's songs around. I could sing Barbara Manatee all day long. It's a cute, harmless little children's program. Never have I thought of it as overly Christian or overly moralistic. That is, until I left Christianity.
Over the past six months, our family has been transitioning from a sincere, Bible-believing Christian family to a secular one. The process of facing our doubts about God and working through the deterioration of faith has been long and painful, and the decisions we've made along the way have not been made lightly. The decision to formally stop attending church, for example, was huge, stirring up issues with our extended families and putting us and our kids in an awkward place culturally. And there are still a lot of small decisions we are making on a daily basis. Small, seemingly innocuous decisions that create a lot of inner conflict for me, bringing up questions I've not yet realized I could ask.
As I sat back in my over-sized arm chair watching Veggie Tales over the screen of my laptop, and more importantly, watching my three children watching Veggie Tales, I felt one of those little inner conflicts prodding me to attention.
The episode in particular was An Easter Carol, appropriate for this time of year. The story loosely resembles Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and is about an Easter egg factory mogul who wants to demolish a local church and build a theme park 'Easterland' in its place. Or something like that. I never really paid too much attention. At the end of the day - apologies for spoilers - they help Ebenezer Nezzer to understand that the true meaning of Easter isn't eggs but the resurrection of Jesus.
Obviously, I knew this would be the story. It's a Christian Easter story. Of course the film would bring it all back around to the resurrection of Christ. But I'd never noticed before how in depth the story went. The 'ghost' of sorts, Hope, takes Mr Nezzer into the church that is to be demolished, and shows him the stained glass windows that depict the story of Jesus' death on the cross. She gives a long talk about how we are all sinners but Jesus took our sins upon him and was crucified on the cross. The scene is very emotional and dark, and Mr Nezzer doesn't see how this is a happy story at all. Then Hope explains that three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, and this is the hope that represents Easter.
My two older children watched fixedly. Even one of the neighborhood boys playing at our house was watching reverently. (My toddler son watched too, but I'm thinking he was more interested in the pretty colors.) I felt rather uncomfortable with the scenario. This is one of those things I am still learning to wade through. Am I making too big a deal out of this? I tried to think of the situation just like a Christmas movie depicting Santa as real. That analogy didn't help, though, seeing as I don't tell the children Santa is real either. Here my kids were being told by a lovable tomato and cucumber that all of this is very true. We don't believe it is true. Harmless? I just don't know.
We feel we have a lot of undoing to do, especially with our oldest child, who is seven. She has been raised in church and told by the church - and us, her parents - that Jesus died on the cross for her, that we are sinners and that belief in him will grant us eternal life in heaven, not hell. Slowly, we've been trying to shift this paradigm we've instilled in our kids. We want them to think for themselves, so we've never come right out and said, 'None of this is true.' Instead, we've asked them what they think, and we've accepted their answers, even when they have differed with our own.
Still, it's our responsibility to monitor what they are told and by whom, to the best of our ability. We don't take them to church anymore, because we don't want them being taught that the Bible is true by (well-meaning) Sunday School teachers. Veggie Tales has always been welcome in our home, and those cute little vegetables are pretty trustworthy, which makes me wonder if it's any less indoctrinating to have them teaching our kids about Jesus than a Sunday School teacher. For a seven year old and a five year old, and even, I guess, an almost two year old, distinguishing between truth and fiction is hard enough, and when it's being explained to you by a character you trust, even if it's only a cartoon, it's even harder to decipher.
We know Veggie Tales aren't going to bring our kids violence or smuttiness or bad language through our TV screens. But I'm wondering now if the show is as harmless as I always believed it to be, now that its message is one we know to be false?
Could it be time to say goodbye to our colorful cornucopia of garden produce who can hold objects with no arms, who make witty and adorable jokes, sing silly songs and dance with stuffed manatees, but also preach an ancient myth as absolute truth? Is it time to say So Long, Larry? TTFN, Tom?
Or am I making a big deal out of nothing?
The small, seemingly innocuous decisions.
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