This weekend while Lindsey was down, we rented a particularly disturbing movie entitled "Jesus Camp." If you get a chance to rent it and watch it (it's at your local blockbuster), you most definitely should. It's very eye opening. It takes place in my home state, Missouri, which makes sense now that I think about it.
Anyway, the movie follows a few children (ranging from ~8-13) who are part of a Pentecostal youth ministry. The movie shows a lot of interesting facets of this ministry. I'd just like to lay out a few of the more disturbing quotes from the movie:
It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!
-The kids' youth pastor
And while I'm on the subject, let me say something about Harry Potter. Warlocks are the enemies of God! And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they're an enemy of God and had it been in the old testament Harry Potter would have been put to death!
Crowd: Amen!
-Same youth pastor
Did you get to the part yet where they say that science hasn't proven anything?
-One of the kid's moms while in a home schooling session
There is a part in the movie where they go into how impressionable kids are, how they can use them so easily. They don't think about what the authority figures are telling them, they just buy the whole thing. That's exactly why they do what they do.
It breaks my heart to see these kids sucking up everything that is said to them, six year olds imitating adults who are crying and speaking in tongues during worship, nine year olds preaching the absolute Truth to people without knowing why other than the fact that their parents told them to.
By the end of the movie (Lindsey will back this up), I was in the fetal position. Not just because of how the kids are treated, but mostly because the entire movie reminds me a lot of my childhood. Watching it now, I can see that it's really messed up, but if you would have shown that movie to me in sixth grade, I would have wondered what was wrong with it. I can recall going to revivals and crying and raising my hands because I felt like I was wrong if I didn't. Later, I remember not being emotionally affected and thinking that I was broken or that God didn't love me, that the other kids would see that I was a phony or a fake while I stood stoic as my friends convulsed on the floor. It's all very surreal now, but it was very real at the time.
I'm afraid that the kids are going to end up like me: nineteen and foundationless. I was force-fed that message for so long that I built every aspect of my personality on it. I felt that I was wrong and broken because I wasn't feeling this "holy spirit" like the rest of my friends and family were. Now that I don't agree with the message anymore, it's still hard to let go of the feeling that I'm broken and wrong. Worse still, my foundation of spirituality was shattered.
Perhaps that's a good thing. I'm somewhat of a blank slate now. I'm just afraid to get into religion seriously again because I don't want to end up duped into the same situation. Who knows what will happen. I just thought I'd share a piece of myself with the community today.
