As for Me and My House

     It's after midnight, and I'm about finished with the hard work of parting with the majority of the books that have lasted till this move.  Now, I had sworn off years ago nursery rhymes, Disney, anything even slightly promoting "good" witchcraft, and anthropomorphism, which leaves no wonder that children think animals know their imminent demise. But, somehow along the way, I let down my guard, compromised for sentimentality or for traditionalism, because we can't seem to get enough of good ole country living stories.
     You know, we wonder why our kids are satisfied with things that are "unprofitable," futile, and vain.  Yet, look what we've been "feeding" them, since they were old enough to listen.  How is it that a Christian would read her child a book that her God has intentionally been left out of?  Why is it okay that the lessons He has taught us from the beginning are so easily portrayed as someone else's morals, as though he does not exist?  No wonder we need a hero; there is no God.
     This process is gut wrenching for me, as selective as I thought I'd been, especially the young children's ones and those they learned to read to. Because certain of these books represent windows of time and memories with each child individually.  But how can I continue to harbor them when I know what I know now?  In this age of information, it doesn't take long to find out: that when a person looks up the author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, "Christian" is automatically marked out of the search because there is no association; that when Louisa May Alcott is searched, we find her father was a Transcendentalist and the apple didn't fall far from the tree; that L. M. Montgomery of "Anne of Green Gables" fame wrote books that were "moral, but not Christian," and was disillusioned by religion as was evidenced by occult and humanism themes in her later work; that John Piper writes that Robert Louis Stevenson went so far as to join a club with the motto, "Ignore everything that our parents taught us," renouncing, of course, the faith of his father; that Mark Twain was quoted saying, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," and, "if Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian;" that Pooh's creator's son said that if he had spent the time on him that he did his characters that he might have had a father; and that even Old Yeller has nothing firm to stand on.  
      Then, there are Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew books on Focus on the Family's pluggedin's review that say "None" under Christian beliefs.  Fancy Nancy, that we have many of, has no Christian anything yet is sold on Christianbooks.  That should be an alert to how far we've gone. And an article about the American Girl company says that there has not been a new book accompanying a doll with a Christmas story since 2000.
     Have we been the silly women led astray the Bible speaks plainly of?  The one thing I can say is that I'm glad the kids have been workers more than readers, else they might have spent many idle hours with these books, of milk instead of meat.  A good thing is that we can hold on to tales like Pollyanna and The Swiss Family Robinson and Little House (although it sounds like Pioneer Girl has something more to offer than the others), and even Pride and Prejudice.  And there are still mainstays like C. S. Lewis, John Bunyan, and Elizabeth Prentiss.

     We get one shot at this.  Make it count.