I know many of my current subscribers are teens or young adults. You probably love writing, or at least reading, given that you put up with the highly-specific material I publish. Maybe you too grew up reading ravenously and can point to the books that marked your childhood — the Chronicles of Narnia, 100 Cupboards, the Lord of the Rings, Treasure Island, the Wind in the Willows, the Green Ember, or whatever they may be.
I’d also like to hazard the guess that you would want your own kids to be raised with all sorts of great stories readily at hand. Whether you dream of having a family or not, you know that if God leads you in that direction, you’re going to do your utmost to make sure those kids grow up right. Maybe you work with kids right now, through your church or by babysitting. If so, you’ve probably seen the sort of things kids are exposed to and taught these days, and it horrifies you.
Or maybe you haven’t even considered that yet. Life is too busy with school or work or something else — and yet, when you think about it, you nod along, quite sure that if you had kids, you would want nothing but the best for them.
What a kid reads is massively important in shaping the kind of person he grows up to be. To borrow a metaphor from Kevin Swanson, what will you be feeding him? Real food? Poison?
Now, what exactly you hand your kids to read is age-dependent, as well as hinging on your kid’s exact personality, tolerance levels, and so on and so forth. Some kids are highly sensitive to violence. Others might have lingering nightmares after having heard a description of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Still others will be unbothered. But what overriding principles should you look to when selecting material for your children?
There’s a fantastic quote by C.S. Lewis, and as always, there’s no beating his concise, well-worded arguments:
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
Truth, beauty, and goodness. Those must be your criteria. Now, all three can be present in conjunction with other things. I’ve talked about before how good can be movingly highlighted when placed in direct opposition to an ugly evil. Granted, there are limits: things like identity politics skews, gratuitous gore, or steamy romance scenes which, in the true fashion of poison, render the whole meal fatal no matter the size of the grain of toxin.
Hoewever, violence levels, scary situations, the ugliness of evil — those are all things to be left up to individual parental discretion. But there is a point at which children can no longer be sheltered. Sooner or later, that child will read his first alarming news headline. Sooner or later, he’ll learn a disgusting truth about the fallen nature of the world. And at that point, you want to be sure that what your child has been reading will help and not hinder him in becoming a soldier of the light, grounded on solid stories of heroes who overcome evil, instead of caving before it in despair.
Found them first on truth. Then teach them discernment. Teach them to analyze and to pick apart the bad from the good.
You can’t keep kids on squeaky-clean stories forever. The world is evil and nasty, and unless a kid is shown a powerful good to match it, he may forever discard the books and morals of his childhood as sentimental and inadequate to reality.
There is a more rousing picture of perserverance in the character of Brandon Sanderson’s Kaladin than any I have seen in cleaner, Christian works. In Kaladin is a picture of striving for honor and integrity even when facing the most insurmountable odds and personal doubt. Though obviously not suitable for a five-year-old, or even a thirteen-year-old, that book, in the hands of one taught discernment and capable of reading about violence, becomes a treasured and lasting example.
I was incredibly blessed to be brought up on good books. Rereading Narnia, LotR, and the Redwall books at an older age revealed to me how crucial they’d been in shaping my personality and my perception of good versus evil. I was given brave, active heroes who overcame obstacles, temptations, and flaws — not victims or corrupted antiheroes or perfect, unrelatable little saints. They pursued the good because it was the right thing to do. Indeed, kids who see heroes like themselves overcoming temptations and choosing the good are far more likely to be affected positively than kids who are given perfect heroes they can’t possibly relate to. You don’t teach by showing someone who’s done it, you teach by showing how to do it. How many times, as a child, did I rally myself with the words, “and the heirs of Flint and Fay were brave.“? How has my faith in God’s promised ending been bolstered by tales where the bad guys always lose?
When reading, we vicariously live through the heroes. We relate to them. And what we see them doing affects us.
Think about what messages will enter your child’s mind, what ‘food’ they will eat. Will they have a good, healthy diet? Will desserts be present only in appropriate quantities? Will they stuff their faces with the same poison all their friends do? Be careful, and consider these things. Nothing influences the mind like stories.
I know it seems like a long way off. Still, it’s something to consider. Family is the building block of society, and moral people affect entire systems. When you raise kids, you shape them into who they’re going to be one day. Everything about that, even — and might I say especially — stories, is important. It may be hard to find good stories, to be intentional, to make sure your kids are always rooted in the Bible. But it will be absolutely worth it.
Have a good week, friends. Keep fighting the good fight.
Cheers!
P.S. Maybe a week after I finished this article, (I usually write them in advance and fine-tune them before release,) this was in S.D. Smith’s newsletter:
Amen. Preach it.
Alright, see ya later!
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