interesting insights from Veggie Tales creator, Phil Vischer

I happen to have a lot of respect for this man because his mother, Scottie May, has been one of the most influential mentors I have ever had, and if he's anything like his mother (which it seems like he is), he's a man after God's own heart.  As I seek to live and teach the Gospel among children, youth and families, I constantly wrestle with how much to teach and how deep to go at different ages and phases of spiritual growth.  And I generally am advised to, essentially, water things down a bit.  I personally love Veggie Tales for the "watered down" basics of the Bible.  But I'm not content to leave anyone there.  I want people, including young people, to ask the difficult questions and wrestle with the difficult answers and sometimes the lack of answers.  Anyway, I just came across this interview with Phil Vischer randomly today, so it's a bit old, but here are a couple of snippets that I thought were profound...

I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, "Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so," or "Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!" But that isn't Christianity, it's morality. 

I only get my form when I stay in the current of God's will and allow Him to carry me where He wants me to be. And that was such a huge shift for me from the American Christian ideal. We're drinking a cocktail that's a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we've intertwined them so completely that we can't tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It's the Oprah god. So I had to peel that apart. I realized I'm not supposed to be pursuing impact, I'm supposed to be pursuing God. And when I pursue God I will have exactly as much impact as He wants me to have. 

We're not called to be a people of vision, we're called to be a people of revelation. God speaks and we follow. We've completely taken this Disney notion of "when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true" and melded that with faith and come up with something completely different. There's something wrong in a culture that preaches nothing is more sacred than your dream. I mean, we walk away from marriages to follow our dreams. We abandon children to follow our dreams. We hurt people in the name of our dreams, which as a Christian is just preposterous. 

That doesn't mean I just sit here waiting for God to hand me a Post-it note with tomorrow's agenda. But I brainstorm, I have ideas, I put them on the wall, and I pray about them. Then one of those ideas will start to percolate a bit, start to bubble, and then I chase the bubble to see if that's where God is moving me. But if suddenly God seems to be moving me in a different direction, I let go of that idea, because it's just an idea. If I keep calling it my dream, I'm holding on to it too tightly until it becomes something I can't let go of. And the only thing I can't let go of is God. Everything else should be held with an open hand. 

And from another interview regarding his current ventures, "What's in the Bible"-

For this new video series, he is perfectly willing to raise some difficult issues, “stepping on land mines every day,” as he puts it, in order to better prepare children for questions they will have later. 

“Where there is controversy, I think it is important to teach the controversy,” says Phil.