Think For Yourself

Last night, my friends and I watched a movie called Jesus Camp. It's been a pretty popular movie to talk about, but none of us had watched it. Since we talk about religion and things like that a lot we thought it might be a good idea to finally see it.

After the movie ended we all three sat on the couch at my friends house silently. We were speechless. Where to begin?

None of the beliefs of the people in the film were that appalling to me. Honestly every religion or belief system in the universe has some sort of ridiculous sounding characteristics. Every religion just thinks that their insane sounding beliefs are true and everyone else's is just wrong. Everyone thinks their religion is right. I think that in a way everyone is right. The only wrong is thinking you're the only one who's right.

Anyways, my problem is not with the religion at all. My only problem is with the idea that people control children. to a point where they can't make their own choices. People control children and mold them to be little clones of themselves. That is not an adult's role in a child's life at all.

A good role model would be an adult who shows a child every side of an issue or equation. They would show a child that there are many different views and then give the child the facts and let the child make their decision from there. A good role model would never tell a child that there is only one right choice.

Parents, teachers, and role models should keep children safe, but they do not need to shelter them too much. Some children know very little, like they've been kept in a bomb shelter. Others are intelligent and educated, like they've been kept in a shark cage. A shark cage is the amount of sheltering that a kid needs. It keeps them away from danger but they can still see and experience it. Kids need to know about dangers and bad things and good things. They need to learn, not be kept locked up in a tower until they've been fed whatever information their parents want them to be fed.

Kids can make choices. They aren't always good choices and they do need guidance when making choices, but they can make choices. Everyone can make choices.

If you watch only one news source, you will be limited by the fact that you are only hearing one biased side of the story. News is supposed to be unbiased, but as it's run by people, it tends to be slightly biased. In order to form your own opinion on things you need to look at many different sources and determine what part of the things you hear are truth. Then you come up with an opinion based on those facts. Parents are going to have biased opinions that they share with their children, but they should encourage their children to hear other's opinions too.

No one should ever be limited to the opinion of another person. People should interact with people who completely disagree with their beliefs. And a person's beliefs can not be justified by them saying that they believe it because that's "how they were raised." People need to think for themselves.

Halloween Party Update:
Before watching Jesus Camp, my friends and I managed to have a very productive brainstorming session for our script. In short it is going to be hilarious....hopefully. There will be guys ripping off their own shirts, lurking ghosts made by a person wearing a sheet, and random mysterious voodoo dolls. Today I also found out how to play Quidditch. I'm thinking it sounds like a lot of fun and it might be good for the party but I don't know yet.