I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a couple of days ago and I really liked it. That surprised me since I didn’t like the book. I found it too violent. And I’d heard rumblings the movie was too violent also. Heather Ivester, one of my favorite bloggers linked to this article on Crosswalk.com. In the article, Lisa Rice says:

As I looked around the theater and saw dozens of little children dressed as wizards and sorcerers, watching one horror after another on the big screen, my heart broke for the sheer lack of parental discernment.

My kids weren’t dressed as wizards and I have a problem with this gal talking about the lack of parental discernment, but that’s neither here nor there. The point I’m making now is that I expected to see a very violent film. “. . . one horror after another on the big screen . . .”

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not nearly as graphic as I remembered the book being. And I liked it way better than the book because of that.

On the FiF bulletin board there was a raging discussion about edgy writing that kind of floated over and stayed in the foggy area of “how graphic can Christians be when they write?” I am of the “not very” variety. I don’t want graphic sex or violence in the books I read and I can’t write that stuff, either.

And yet, here is a fine Christian woman on Crosswalk.com who thinks the fourth Harry Potter movie is too violent and I think it’s just dandy.

There are a couple of points I’d like to make about this.

One is that because of varied upbringings, what feels graphic to one person does not feel so to another. To write graphically is simply to show something. But a man who has grown up in a culture where all the women go braless, is not going to notice anything amiss in a movie where a woman is bouncing around in a tank top, while a man who grew up in a country where all the women wore burkas would probably be distracted by the jiggling going on.

The same goes for violent images. I guess I’ve seen more than Lisa has, because I wasn’t bothered by the violence in The Goblet of Fire. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, just making note of the fact.

I guess the thing for a writer to do, then, is to properly identify his audience. Write as graphically as you need to write in order to reach your audience. I’m not saying it’s ever OK to write a graphic sex scene. I don’t believe it is. I had a friend who used to say about the seeker sensitive churches, that pretty soon they’d be doing striptease for Jesus. In other words, some people just think anything goes as long as you are doing it with the right motivation. But we know this isn’t the case. Reaching out to steady the ark of the covenant so it doesn’t fall is a pretty decent thing to do but it will still get you killed. Because God says you can’t touch the ark. So if God tells us to be sexually pure in thought and deed, we can’t very well write sexually impure stuff.

But there remains a question. What is pure and what is impure? In varying cultures there really may be varying answers.

I don’t mean to say that sin is OK since everyone is doing it. I mean to say that some things are sinful only because society sees them as sinful. For instance, I don’t believe tribal women going topless are sinning. When I look up references to nudity in the Bible I find it speaking of the area of the body between the thighs and the waist. I can find no reason that a woman would have to cover her breasts. In the US, however, I believe a woman would sin if she were to go topless.

So I’m not saying that sin is OK if everyone in society does it. I’m saying that some things are sinful in one society and not in another. So I think with writing. Some writing may be too graphic for one audience but not too graphic for another.

Hmmm. Any thoughts on this? Have I traveled over into too much subjectivity?
I’ll get to the second point tomorrow.

ThePazooter Works is kind of a fun site. You won’t find Alice in Wonderland with animated gifs anywhere else, I bet.

Short post today because I’m heading off to see Harry Potter. But if you haven’t read the comments from Friday, take a look. Bryan Davis has been telling us some fascinating things about marketing and sales and such.

Back on the purveyor of porn post, Becky made this comment:

I’m speechless.

But the saddest thing, in my opinion, is that so little is been done for teens by CBA publishers. One thing is apparent: people with an anti-God agenda understand that it is easier to sway children and youth.

Christians used to know this. (The beginning of Sunday school; organizations like Youth for Christ, Child Evangelism, Youth with a Mission) Now I can’t get started on what all I’m thinking.

What are we willing to sacrifice to minister to the children of the world? We see starving children on TV looking at us with big, brown eyes, and we sign up to send 17 dollars a month to feed them. We have so much, and these children have so little. They are starving.

So what about our spiritually starved kids? Shall we donate monthly for their well-being?

Publishing costs money. No one can simply publish good books for kids without having some plan. If the children’s books aren’t selling–aren’t supporting themselves–then the publisher that wants to publish them has to find another source of funding. It needs to look at children’s books as the pro-bono work of the company, perhaps. Maybe it can take some of what it makes off of romance, which is selling, and donate to the children’s books it wants to publish. Will Steeple Hill donate money to fund Christian children’s books? Or even clean, moral children’s books? They are owned by a company that sells hard-core porn. What do they care for clean children’s books?

And, that can be said from several Christian publishing companies now. They are, more and more, owned by large companies that care nothing about mission work. The Christian companies must make profit for their parent companies or they will be shut down, I suppose. I don’t see how these companies can take their profits from one genre and invest it in another genre as a ministry.

So, that leaves the smaller, independent companies. They are in a position to use their profits to take chances on children’s books. Some are doing that and meeting with success. Barbour, I think, made money from public domain books and romances and now they are dipping their toes into children’s publishing. They are moving slowly with quality stuff that is geared to sell. AMG took a chance with Bryan Davis’s successful Dragon in Our Midst books.

But what if they don’t meet with success? What if it takes a while for the books to sell? What if no one comes up with any blockbusters anytime soon? Should the publishers keep on printing books that lose money? Should they look at publishing children’s books as a ministry instead of a business?

The smaller companies that have the freedom to spend their profits by funding children’s books, can’t afford to do it for very long, probably. And the bigger companies have their bottom lines to make.

What if someone went on TV and showed the mangled bodies of kids killed in gang wars. Or the innocent victims of drive-by shootings? What if we showed skeletal young men dying of AIDS, and young, pregnant women addicted to drugs and looking into the camera with glassy eyes? Would people commit to donating 15 dollars a month toward publishing children’s books that carry the gospel message?

I’m not sure what the answer is. I do believe that if Christian children’s books won’t sell, we should print them up by the thousands and give them away. I believe that children need good books. Not just gospel books. But all manner of good fiction and nonfiction. Science books and history books. Stories of heroes and failures and friends and foes. Stories written from a Christian worldview. I think these stories can come out in all kinds of different ways. Movies and comics and traditional books.

And I believe that feeding the mind is as important as feeding the body. How to fund all this feeding is the problem. Maybe I should sell porn with one hand and use the proceeds to print Christian books. Would that be like the Israelites plundering Egypt? Of course we can’t sell porn. We can’t feed trash to our neighbors even if they beg for it and are willing to pay big bucks for it. What if we sell something like cookbooks and use the proceeds to publish children’s books?

There is another side to this ministry question, though. There is the possibility that if we look at publishing as a ministry instead of a business, we end up with low quality fiction works that are little more than sermons in disguise. Some would argue that this is the very reason Christian children’s books don’t sell. Some would say the publishers were doing a ministry and forgot about publishing interesting stories.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. How can we fund children’s books and encourage quality? I hope to help things along by offering honest reviews here. If you read about a book that tickles your fancy, buy the book. Buy the book to encourage quality and to fund a ministry. It’s a win/win situation.

More on Google’s digital library.

The first Thanksgiving Feast wasn’t repeated year after year. Some presidents declared one-time Thanksgiving Days, but the national holiday we celebrate today didn’t come into being until Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

Abraham Lincoln