The Christian Guide to Fantasy

Sad but true, this is no joke. Larry back on wotmania.com brought this website to my attention. It does at times raise a few interesting viewpoints. Some find it amusing, others deem it pathetic. Take a look for yourself and I'll let you decide. . .

The thing which did it for me was the "Christian Morality" meter. It rates every series as harmless, good, dangerous, etc.

Has it come down to this? Have Christians become so insecure about their own faith that they feel the need to come up with a website such as this??? If so, then the Lord have mercy. . .

Check it out: www.christianfantasy.net

2 commentaires:

Mesmacat said...

There are hundreds of them out there, entire galactic clusters devoted to rating the morality of just about everything that hits the shelves. Of them all that i have seen, the ones about harry potter and its influences on young minds has to be the most frenzied and energetic in recent times.

Then again, assuming that you are bringing up a kid in a certain religious or philosophical framework, this kind of thing would be a godsend (pardon sort of pun) because these days, the world being a wierd and wonderful place with lots of folks doing lots and things you just don't know what is in a book that looks oh so innocent, and has nice little fairies and bunny rabbits in it... it might just be a deadly conduit for all manner of difficult and challenging ideas. Be afraid of the bunnies, they come bearing messages from the other side

Joe said...

I would look at this from a slightly different perspective.

As a parent you may not want your 11 year old son reading about rape or graphic descrptions of. Now, as a fantasy fan yourself (or perhaps not) you might realize that particular novels or series contain descriptions that you do not believe your son is ready for. Maybe George Martin is too graphic overall for little Johnny.

Well, great! You know this and can steer him off of the overly graphic books.

But say your son likes fantasy and you don't read the genre and don't know what is good, what is poor quality, and what has questionable content. What is your resource?

You come across this website and it gives you the content of the book and lists out particular scenes. Then you have a resouce that can help guide you for books that you feel little Johnny is ready for now and some that maybe he can read when he is 15 or can decide on his own for any book.

There is a different website for movies: screenit.com

I don't use it because I'm not a parent yet, but if I had a child and I didn't know about a particular movie, I'd look it up in a heartbeat. A co-worker of mine had a daughter who wanted to see something and asked my opinion (because I'm known to watch a lot of movies). I told her what I knew and told her about the website. Well, there was overly graphic sexual material in the film and the daughter didn't see the movie.

To me, it's a good thing but should be taken with the perspective of sometimes there is just stuff you don't want to read about because you don't like it or are uncomfortable with it.