One of the most difficult areas of debate and controversy in my church is Christian entertainment. We are a very conservative church and, although all of us are saved, not all of us have the same view about what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate entertainment values.
Take Christian the comics debate. My son has been reading Marvel comics for the past year or two, and I didn’t really see anything wrong with them after casually perusing them. The ones he was reading have a very clear view of good and evil, and seem to teach him that a superhero ” someone with unusual strength and power ” should use that power to help the weak.
When he showed one of his best friends the superhero comics, however, that friend was downright shocked. He was from a family that was even more conservative than ours in some ways, and he was only allowed to read Christian comics. Although many ways Christian comic books are no different than normal comics, there are certain things that you can put in superhero comics that you can’t put in a Christian book. There weren’t the same skintight outfits, for example, and certain risky themes were completely left out. In addition, the whole story was usually tied to a tale from the bible.
Although I approved of these Christian comics and saw them as good for my son to be reading, I disagreed with his friend’s parents who said that a Christian should not read normal comic books. To me, it seemed obvious that my son’s faith is not going to be threatened by his superhero comics. Nonetheless, the parents were adamant that these comics are inappropriate for a child of my son’s age. After a while, we just had to give up the argument. It wasn’t going anywhere.
One thing that Christian comics are really good for is showing the Bible to the unsaved. The great thing about Christian comics is they can make the Bible seem hip and accessible to young people, while simultaneously summarizing it briefly. The truth is, most people aren’t going to read the Bible just because you tell them to. Many of the people, however, will read a short comic book ” particularly if they’re young. I have a friend who is a Christian comedian who pushes these things religiously. He gets literally thousands of Christian comics and distributes them to all the kids in the audience when he does his act. He claims he has saved dozens of souls.
