This may only be relevant to parents of toddlers/preschoolers, but I am curious to others' feedback as well.
About a year ago, on a flight from Dallas back to Washington, I met a man who worked for Exclaim Entertainment...we chatted, and when he learned I had a toddler, he gave me a promotional DVD of "Boz the Bear" and told me all about it.
I was done with my 3 oz of coke & 4 pretzels, so we chatted quite a bit. It sounded like a great new alternative for teaching my little one basic colors, shapes, numbers, and also about values & faith. (Teaching faith to Faith will strengthen my faith, I'm sure. I just had to say that.)
Well, since then we've purchased 2 DVDs of Boz the Bear (I know, wow!) and Faithy has fallen in love with him. He's a large green Bear who lives next door to the Baxter family, and they have all kinds of fun in their little Utopia, while learning about numbers, letters and values. The songs are quite catchy actually, and I find myself singing them around the house.
3 days ago, however, my infatuation with Boz the Bear came to a sudden halt. I turned to Jaime and asked, "Honey, I don't ever hear Boz mention JESUS...he talks about God's love, but does he ever mention JESUS?" She paused, reflected, and flatly said, "No, he sure doesn't." We were both caught off guard, and I was incensed.
BOZ DOESN'T MENTION JESUS!
It is impossible to talk about God's love and exclude Jesus. It's impossible to teach values and faith without Jesus. I thought, certainly I have overlooked it.
I wrote to the company at their Dallas headquarters.
Sure enough, I got a standard reply from them, stating that they are trying to build bridges with parents, and hopefully at some point later the parents can flesh out what God's love means as they teach their kids. They strategically avoid the name of Jesus to reach a broader market and not offend people.
I am so angry at that reply I can't even think straight. I am still trying to figure out what to do about it, I sure will write people at Exclaim Entertainment who are higher up than the first person who answered my mail. But what do you do about someone who won't mention Jesus' name, but still wants to talk about God? All of their videos are sold at Family Christian (see the CHRIST in the name) and Boz is doing a summer tour of churches in the Christian faith. But he won't mention Christ on screen.
That is wrong, very wrong. He's marketed to Christians like me who are lapping up the product, and only after we've purchased can we determine that Boz won't have anything to do with Jesus.
Thoughts?
Tomorrow or Thursday, I'll post about Bobby Ross' reply to my post yesterday. It really helped me out, and I know it definitely grew my perspective on things.
Please keep praying for Baby Bennett http://www.prayingforbennett.blogspot.com/
And my wife's blog is better http://www.murraysanderson.blogspot.com/
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4 comments:
We have a Boz DVD too, and Rachel really likes it. While I see what you are saying, I'm not as angry as you are about it. I don't use these DVDs to teach Rachel about Jesus and God. I mainly like the DVDs because it teaches shapes and colors, etc. It's great that they add the God element to it... she can see that God created the shapes and colors. But hopefully Brent and I can teach her about Jesus and everything she would need to learn about that very important subject. So, I do agree that Jesus is definitely a part of God that our children need to learn (the most important part), but I don't feel as though the DVD needs to do the teaching.
I guess I should also say that I don't expect that you are using these DVDs alone to teach your children about Jesus. I can see what you are saying, I was just explaining why I'm not as angry about it. Make any sense? :)
Good clarification, Kelli, I'll make my reply at your blog.
MS
In the interest of keeping this topic in one place, here is the reply you put on my blog:
"Thank you for reading my blog and commenting about my Boz the Bear ranting. As you said, of course we are teaching her about Jesus, and wouldn't rely on a video to do that. But we would also not allow her to watch a video that teaches faith or values according to Buddhist beliefs or Muslim beliefs, and then say, "well, we will teach her about Jesus later." My point/question is, should I allow her to watch a video that purports to teach about God's love without ever mentioning Jesus? (I've had very interesting exchanges with an Exclaim Company rep today. They promised me Jesus would be mentioned in the upcoming Boz release "A Wowee Bozowee Christmas". I should have congratulated them for their boldness and risky stance in mentioning Jesus at Christmas time. Ha!) Faith in time will watch other videos that are for entertainment, like Incredibles or Cars. They don't mention Jesus, and I'm fine with that. But should I/we as Christian parents allow someone to teach our children about God without mentioning Jesus? A video that teaches incompletely or incorrectly about God is dangerous in my opinion...close to the truth but not really truth at all. These days it is getting more & more politically correct to leave Jesus out & just talk about God. People don't pray in Jesus' name in public anymore. But if someone says "God", then we who believe in Jehovah God are happy, and those who believe in Allah are happy. It's like Jesus is seen as too controversial, so "let's just mention God and that's something we can all agree on." I don't want to have to rush home and say, "Faith, Daddy doesn't mention Jesus in public, but He is God's Son, in fact, He is part of God."
Ok, I'm going on too long, but I really appreciate your feedback, and it's always helpful to get others' perspectives."
Now it's me talking: I see how you are upset about the marketing of this product. I received the DVD as a gift, so I didn't know where it was purchased and was actually pleasantly surprised after watching it and hearing God mentioned as the one who created the world and everything in it. Of course, I wouldn't condone watching a video on Buddhist/Muslim beliefs and say "oh, I'll teach about Jesus later." I think that is a little extreme when discussing this DVD. I guess I just see this differently. My point is, I don't see this DVD as teaching about God. It's teaching about shapes and colors, and mentioning that God created them and we should thank God for everything. I wouldn't buy a DVD that's sole purpose is to teach about God's love that doesn't mention Jesus. If that is how they are marketing this DVD, I understand your concern. In any case, I don't think you have to worry about telling Faith that you don't mention Jesus in public... you have a tremendous passion and she and Eli will definitely benefit from it. :)
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