Very often, the truth is hiding in plain sight. That’s certainly the case with much of children’s entertainment.
The underlying message affixed to any number of movies geared toward kids seems to be some version of following one’s own heart, listening to his desires, chasing after her feelings. But that message, according to Trevin Wax, is a direct contradiction to the Gospel.
Wax, an author and visiting professor at Cedarville University, recently appeared on CBN’s “Faith in Culture,” were he eschewed such ideologies. While the world calls those ideas “common sense,” he said they are incongruous with Christianity.
“You think of these slogans that are out there, like, ‘Be true to yourself,’ ‘You do you,’ ‘Live your truth,’ ‘You are enough,’ ‘Follow your heart,’ ‘Chase your dreams,'” he said. “Sociologists call that ‘expressive individualism.’ … That’s the plot line in so many movies, even, like, good wholesome movies, in Disney movies. … It kind of passes for common sense in our day and age.”
The secular understanding of “freedom” is a far cry from true freedom as explained in Scripture, Wax said.
“It’s just so easy to define freedom in our day as a freedom from constraints, from limitations,” he explained. “[The world says] freedom is me doing whatever I want to do, when the Bible actually teaches that, ‘No, you doing just whatever you want to do, especially in our flesh, is a kind of slavery.'”
Throughout the New Testament, the Apostle Paul explains human beings will always be slaves to something — either to sin and our own desires or to a just and merciful God whose ways are higher and better than our own.
In Romans 6:16, Paul wrote, “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living” (NLT).
“True freedom is submission to God, and it’s freedom for something,” said Wax. “[I]t’s not doing whatever we want; it’s aligning our wants with God’s will, recognizing that that’s when we’re truly freest.”
Wax is the author of the new book, “The Gospel Way Catechism for Kids,” a children’s edition of his book by the same title.
In it, he and his co-author, Thomas West, outline 50 faith-centered questions and answers for children to read, study, and talk about with their families. He explained that these catechisms should serve as conversation starters in the home.
“A catechism isn’t supposed to be everything,” he said. “It’s supposed to be something. It’s meant to give you the structure or the scaffolding that you can then come in later and begin to fill in.”
While the world teaches a “meditation” that empties the mind of everything, Wax emphasized a godly mindfulness that calls believers to fill their minds with the commands and promises of Scripture.
“We’ve got to distinguish the Christian understanding of prayer from just mindfulness routines or just Eastern meditation that leads us to sort of empty our minds,” he explained. “[B]iblical meditation … is a filling of the mind with Scripture and God’s Word.”
Catch our full conversation with Trevin Wax in the “Faith in Culture” episode above.
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