Reviews by Susan

I was out of town last week in Little Rock for work and had a chance to “digest” some works that I would not have been able to if I was home, as time would not have permitted.

So for the three people who read this I will be giving my review of both a movie and a book. I could have written this right after I finished these works, however I am glad I waited and had time to digest the information given to me.

The first will be the movie “Jesus Camp”. This is an Academy Award nominated documentary about the evangelicals and their training of their children to be “warriors” for their cause. This was a difficult movie to watch, in fact I had to stop it more than once to digest some of the material. On one side it really made me think, it made me wonder what I tell my children about God and religion. How I want to raise them up knowing God and allowing their faith to grow in ways that I can not ever understand. How I want them to grow into faithful adults, if I was getting the message across enough. But it is another thing altogether to have a 6 year old crying because she is being told by a “preacher” that she is a sinner and that the world is the way it is because of her. The fact that they either do not believe in grace or the documentary choose not to show them teaching this aspect of their faith. I tend to think they just don’t allow these young children to know the grace God has given us. It was difficult seeing these children being taught to be extreme pro-life. Not just pro-life, but EXTREME. Bringing out plastic dolls the size of an unborn child and waving them around and taping their mouths shut in protest to abortion. These are children who have no idea what they are being taught. They don’t know what it is that they are protesting. How could they? The families that were followed all home-schooled in order to keep their children from the evils of the world (no disrespect Amy, but I know your reason and theirs. Yours in a good reason, theirs is questionable). If they are kept from knowing the evils of the world, how could they possibly understand what it is these adults are having them protest? I feel like it was showing these people in their lives as they live and they are totally living their lives for Christ, but teaching their children things which I just do not agree with.

The second is a book “come back”. This is a true story about a mother/daughter relationship during the daughters fight with drug addiction. It is written by both the mother and the daughter displaying their different views on the same situations. It was incredibly interesting to read this right now. Not that Emily is having a sudden problem with cocaine, she is simply starting the pre-puberty mess and I feel like I am going to pull my hair out. This showed through their journey how they learned o have a better, more firmly connected relationship. We don’t have near the problems that this family has/had-but I can take some of the practical advice given in the book and apply it to our relationship. This is however a heart-wrenching story in which you hurt for both the mother and the daughter. It was moving, I read it so quickly trying to engulf it as quickly as possible because it was that good. It is so scary how easily and quickly the daughter is taken into the world of drugs and how her parents had no idea. But looking back they noticed the signs, they just weren’t that obvious, everything was very subtle. She didn’t want to hurt her mother, she just felt like that was the life she needed to lead. An eye-opening story that I enjoyed immensely.

So, there you have it. My two horrifically written reviews. But I needed to get my thoughts out on paper-to help me remember what I was thinking about these things at the time.