The Covenant Household

by Douglas Wilson

To just count profanities is not Christian worldview thinking: it is just skimming along the surface. What parents should do is tell the kids to go ahead and go, but then tell them they need to be prepared to offer a movie review at dinner the following night. That kid will not have the ability to offer anything like a thoughtful review that engages with the movie, and now they are off to the internet to look up the number of hells and damns in it. But superficial analysis remains superficial whether the parent is doing it or the kid is. Next time they ask to go to a stupid movie (Stupid Movie 4), the parent can just tell them that they are not engaging with the world like a Christian and that they need to learn how to do that first. They need to interact intelligently with what they are being fed. This is not just about profanity counts and bad scenes: it also has to do with plots, aesthetic values, culture, and morality. The reason they can’t go to Stupid Movie 4 is not because their parent has any criticism of the movie (he hasn’t seen it). The reason they can’t go is because their parent has doubts about the child’s critical abilities.