“Children Aren’t Warriors”

Cathleen Falsani has a good column in the Chicago Sun-Times about the new movie “Jesus Camp.” In it she offers this great observation about trying to make children to be warriors:

Explaining how important it is to “get ‘em young,” Fischer, who tells her young disciples that the “warlock” Harry Potter is “an enemy of God,” says, “I want to see these kids laying down their lives for the Gospel in the same way fundamentalist Muslims do.”

Children aren’t warriors. They’re children. Let them have their few innocent years before sending them off to battle, please. Their parents can do the fighting until they’re old enough to decide whether to enlist or conscientiously object.

When we start treating anyone -- children, adults, friends, enemies -- as commodities to be “gotten,” beaten or won, we’re no longer on sacred ground.

We’re in dangerous territory.

Amen! It seems that too often children are drug into the “culture wars” and placed on the “frontlines.” Sometimes it seems like Christians use and hide behind their children just to win a debate. But is that really the right way to act?