Raising Children who have Seen The Giver Author: Marcia Harris Brim Issue: Volume One, Number Five – September 1, 2014 Web Site: www.brimwoodpress.
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Raising Children who have Seen The Giver
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Author: Marcia Harris Brim
Issue: Volume One, Number Five – September 1, 2014
Web Site: www.brimwoodpress.com
Circulation: 300
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1. Welcome
2. Raising Children Who Have Seen The Giver: A Movie Review
3. A Script for Discussing The Giver
4. After the Movie, Before the Bible Study (some thoughts for parents)
5. A Family Bible Study on Job
6. A Product Marcia Recommends
7. Some Big News for Brimwood Press and our Customers
8. A Writing Contest for Homeschool Students and their Teachers
9. Upcoming Issues
10. Pass This Newsletter Along
11. Reprint Rights
12. Supplement: “Insights for Modern Parents Raising Postmodern Children” – Postponed until October (last time, I promise)
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1) Welcome to the BrimWood Press newsletter!
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This new monthly newsletter is dedicated to Christian parents raising children in this postmodern, secular, Gnostic culture: parents who want their families to shine. (Matthew 5:14-16 & Philippians 2:15.)
This newsletter provides practical, relevant help for the on-going work of evangelizing our children.
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
Galatians 4:19 ESV
This newsletter is issued on the first Monday of every month (if I’ve got my act together;-).
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2) Raising Children Who Have Seen The Giver
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A movie recommendation for The Giver: The recent Hollywood flick, based on the YA book The Giver, is much like the teen game of “Would you rather?” The book and movie explore the question “Would you rather live in a world without freedom or one filled with suffering?” Jr. high students have been discussing this question since the early nineties, when Lois Lowery first penned her Newberry award winner. Now it’s explored again on the big screen for a much larger audience.
What makes this story a worthy investigation for your children is the fresh light it casts on the Christian’s overused answer to why there’s so much pain and suffering. “Free-will”, when stacked against a world riddled by heartache, seems an enormously high-priced luxury, one that calls into question the wisdom of the Giver of such a gift.
But now, we meet a fictional world. The reader or the viewer is given an opportunity to evaluate this pricey human commodity in a landscape where sameness and conformity rule the day. In this world, death has been disguised and all but forgotten. The thirst for “human knowing” with all its shades of meaning is drugged away, while the last loaded bookshelves stand next to a spiral staircase on the edge of the world.
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With free-will sacrificed in order to eliminate suffering, we recognize what is lost in the exchange. Wisdom, growth and love – inseparable goods of human freedom are now found only in the Giver’s house where suffering also lives. The movie version calls us to ask again: “Would you forfeit freedom to abolish pain?”
For those who know me, it will come as no surprise that I have pre-empted my scheduled newsletter topic to talk about this movie. I have been recommending Lois Lowery’s book to parents for years. Both the author and I believe that suffering and free-will are problems that need to be discussed with jr. high and high school kids.
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As a fictional means for comparison and contrast, The Giver is a powerful teaching tool – one we desperately need in this culture, in which the number one reason cited for agnosticism or atheism is the problem of pain. Many well-taught Christian children have grown up and walked away from their fathers’ faith for the same reason. They cannot reconcile a good all-powerful God and the rampant suffering in the world He made.
This newsletter provides a discussion tool to use with kids who have seen The Giverand a Bible study on Job, who also saw the Giver.
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3) A Script for Discussing The Giver
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For the parent: Below is quite a laundry list of discussion questions. Keep in mind that the goal is to have a discussion, not answer all the questions. Just reading the questions before hand may enable you to gently guide the conversation to a beneficial conclusion. Begin with an open-ended question like: So what did you think about the movie?
It’s great if the discussion unfolds naturally without needing to walk through my specific questions. Just remember, the ultimate purpose of the conversation is to help students think about what the world would look like if human freedom as manifested in human choice was abolished. Does the dramatic reduction of suffering depicted in The Giver make what is lost in the exchange worth it? What is sacrificed to eliminate pain?
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A Discussion Script
In The Giver, the elders of “the community” have done some re-engineering to “fix” problems that hamper human progress. Such is the path leading to every brave new world. (Depending on the age and knowledge of your children, you might ask: “What problem was Hitler trying to solve? How about Stalin, Marx, Mao?”)
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The people in charge: If you have read the book or watched the movie, The Givercreates a world where every significant human choice and correspondingly every significant source of pain have been eliminated. Who created this world?
Who makes all the choices in this community (such as life and death, occupation, spouses, family size, when a child gets a bike, etc.)?
How are people kept in line? Or how is it ensured that people obey all the rules? What happens to people who disobey?
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Sameness rules the day. In what ways are people and their surroundings the same?
How do families look different in this “community” in contrast to our world?
Why would twins who actually look the same threaten the established order?
Things eliminated: What normal human choices or decisions have been eliminated?
Why have colors been blotted out?
What kinds of memories have vanished?
Name other things that have been eliminated.
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The Risk of the Giver: Given the danger of memories, why is the Giver of Memories allowed to remain on the edge of the community and past his legacy along?
What could be worth the risk?
What is his role as an elder?
What things and experiences exists only in the Giver’s house?
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Death, Starvation and Dystopia: In our world, death is the greatest problem for human beings? How has this source of suffering, been sanitized? In this community, there is never any hunger. Why? What was eliminated to produce a well-fed society? (It’s more than the seasons. What else consumes food?) In a community of virtually no pain and in which the sorrow of death has been reframed, (people clap for those being released), The Giver paints a seeming utopia (perfect world). Why is the book labeled a “dystopia”? A typical definition for “dystopia” is “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” from Dictionary.com. Does anything from this definition relate to the community in The Giver? If free-will is the reason why we have death and suffering, is a world where choice and suffering have been virtually eliminated perfect? If not, why not?
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The life of humans after free-will: How would you describe the human beings who live in this world?
What is good about their life?
What are they missing?
What good things exist in our world because we have free-will that does not exist in the “community”?
The goods of free-will: Can you think of any joys in life where pain must be endured before the good is experienced (if this doesn’t prompt initial responses, prime the pump with child birth or child rearing).
Can you think of some examples in life where the cost of some great achievement or the attainment of some meaningful purpose in life is worth the struggle or sacrifices necessary to achieve something prized? (Examples from missions, relationships like 50-year marriages, even years spent struggling to get through school with excellence may help get a conversation going.)
Can good can come out of making bad choices? (Reflect on the prodigal son. Reflect on why God called the tree planted in the middle of the garden “the knowledge of good and evil.”)
What do you like best, the book or the movie? One of the things I like better about the book than about the movie is the fact that the book’s ending has no satisfying, definitive conclusion. It paints the whole scenario and lets the hero escape the Giver’s world, but you never really know: did his act of heroism change everything, or was he actually caught and “released?”
Though I prefer the book, I certainly understand how such a conclusion would not make for a good ending on the big screen. Given that the author according to her blog worked a lot on the movie, it’s likely that both the author and the director steered the movie toward an ending that showed a change in store for the community.
Did it need change? It seems like such a peace-filled place. But what evils lurk under its placid exterior?
Did you like the movie’s ending? Why or why not? What good and bad things would come to the community because of it?
The song that changed everything: Why do you think the movie ends with Jonas finding the cabin? What song was sung there? How does the song mark the beginning of the solution to human suffering and death that only God can bring?
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“Silent Night” is perhaps the most peaceful Christmas Carol of all time. What is God’s plan for bringing peace to the whole world? Thinking about all three verses of the carol, who does it announce that Jesus is? How is human freedom necessary in God’s plan?
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4) After the Movie, Before the Bible Study
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What I decided not to say to parents: Having thought, read and written about suffering for years, not to mention my own share of experience, I have a lot I could say on this subject. For this newsletter, I originally wrote and had edited some 2,000 words on “why suffering,” words I decided to gut. Sometimes the more you know, the noisier your mind becomes and the harder it is to hear that still small voice.
I wanted to give you another perspective on the problem of pain, in addition to the light The Giver casts on the subject. I wanted to alert you to some woeful problems associated with several of the most popular Christian answers on why God allows suffering. But even as I elucidated my answer, its own short comings became glaringly apparent.
Perhaps only then could I hear that still small Voice who whispered His ways to Job from a whirlwind (Job 26:14; 38:1).
While preparing the Job study below, I was struck with the thought, “If even God did not answer Job’s questions about suffering, why do we think we can?
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Human words, full of intellectual understanding and scriptural insight about “why suffering”, cannot provide an adequate balm or bandage for gaping wounds. Understanding why a child is gone does not fill the aching void in a parent’s heart. A victim of a terrible crime or some horrendous disaster is not healed by making “sense” of what she suffered. We don’t set up Bible colleges in refugee camps.
So if we lay aside answers, where does this leave us when confronted with someone’s agony? Our hands must do all they can do; then we must sit with the sufferer in silence. When we hear the question, “Why did God allow this to happen to me?” mere mortals should hesitate to speak. Only God could meet Job in the midst of his pain and speak words he needed to hear, words that answered none of Job’s questions.
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Job’s friends remembered this truth for a while. In fact, they got it right for seven whole days.
And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights,
and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
Job 2:13
For all the explaining and proclaiming we do in the Christian world about why God allows suffering we simply overlook the fact that God never from Genesis to Revelation gives a single definitive answer that makes all forms of suffering understandable to the human mind.
And in the one book dedicated entirely to this subject, those who do the explaining about suffering (after their seven golden days) are the ones sorely reprimanded (Job 42:7-9).
Again, what makes us think we can explain the ways of God?
The suffering and evil of this world is a mystery too lofty for any human mind to fully comprehend. In all our explanations, we ultimately demean God when we reduce Him to a level we can understand.
Have we made ourselves guilty of the sin of Job’s friends? If we do not heed the truth taught by his story, we may find ourselves in need of prayers and sacrifices offered by some righteous sufferer.
All of this to say, our human theologizing about why God allows suffering is not worthless effort. God calls us to engage both our hearts and our minds as we seek after Him. Our attempts to comprehend the various scriptural reasons are important work for theologians, pastors and lay persons. I will come back to my theological perspective on suffering in a future newsletter. But again, all human theology has its limits — which include the size of the brain and the method used to interpret the Word of God. Theology can never provide an answer with a scope that encompasses all of the world’s pain.
Nonetheless, the Bible does provide many answers, and God is a God who condescends and invites us to wrestle. But may we never forget that God is also a God who grieves, a God who bears human scars.
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5) A Family Bible Study On Job
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For Parents: After your movie discussion about The Giver, regardless of the lengths for which you and your children were able to entertain this subject, Job needs to have the last word. You may want to save the following Bible study for a separate conversation with your kids, but this is where the discussion must end.
Ask if anyone in the family can briefly sketch from memory the story of Job.
Ask: What do readers know that Job does not? (The role Satan plays in Job’s suffering and God’s opinion of Job.)
Read Job 1:7-11; 2:4,5
Ask: What is God’s opinion of Job?
Read Job 1:7-11; 2:4,5
Ask: What did Satan claim Job would do if he were confronted with terrible suffering?
Ask: Did Job ever curse God? (Answer: no.)
Ask: Do you remember one person in Job’s family that Satan did not touch?
Read Job 2:8-10
Ask: Why do you think Satan attacked Job’s children but never brought any harm to his faithless, contentious wife?
Read: The Bible tells us that “… we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12
Ask: On whose side was Job’s wife fighting?
Ask: Though Job never knew he was fighting a battle with the evil one, who won?
Read: After Job 2, Satan completely disappears from the story. The challenger simply slithered out of the ring. But Job’s disease and devastation remains for 36 long chapters. During this part of his story, Job has to take on a new set of challengers: his friends. They all have lots of reasons to explain Job’s suffering. They claimed over and over again that Job brought all his suffering upon himself by committing some secret sins (Job 22:5). How do you think that made Job feel?
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As Job’s suffering and confrontations with his friends wore on, what did Job want?Read Job 23:3-7.
Then, in Job 38, God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind. Finally the One who knows the reason for suffering addresses Job. But instead of answering Job’s questions, God questions Job.
Read Job 38 aloud. (If the attention span of your audience allows, read chapter 39 as well.)
Ask: How would you summarize what God said to Job?
Ask: Why do you think God asks questions of a righteous suffering man, who wanted an answer for all th
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