A friend of mine gave me a book called “The gospel according to the Simpsons”. I wasn’t thrilled but decided to read it with an open mind. I consider myself as thinking outside the box when it comes to God, and Christianity. When I saw the two combined, I wasn’t too thrilled. I have history with the Simpsons.
As I read the book, I realized that I had never given the Simpsons a chance when it came to an honest assessment. I saw Bart as being a brat and not wanting to encourage that in my children I placed the show off limits to them. They ended up sneaking watching it when I wasn’t nearby. Eventually I gave up trying to monitor it at all and it became a part of their world.
What troubled me as time went on was how consuming the show was in my children’s thinking. It became their worldview, their mental schemata for encountering new experiences. If there was something they didn’t understand they referred to an episode or a character in the series and related it to that. Honestly, that bothered me a lot.
What the book is pointing out to me is that I no longer have to look at this through the eyes of a father concerned about influences on his children. I don’t know that it will ever be a show I will enjoy watching. Maybe I’m too old, too set in my ways. But the book has been able to shine a light into my thinking and my heart and illuminate areas that can be softened.
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